Burning Day
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash. Sequel to Black Phoenix. In the lead up to Draco's election as Minister, Harry Potter broods. Only he can't do that all the time, even with most of Britain's population terrified of him now. So he has to find something else to occupy his time. And being a Benevolently Snarky Dark Lord is it.
1. Pumice Stone

**Title: **Burning Day

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione

**Warnings: **Angst, violence

**Rating: **R

**Summary: **In the lead-up to Draco's election as Minister, Dark Lord Harry Potter broods. Only he can't do that _all _the time, even with most of Britain terrified of him now. So he has to find something else to occupy his time. And being a Benevolently Snarky Dark Lord is it.

**Author's Notes: **The sequel to _Easy as Falling _and _Black Phoenix_, but still prequel to "Charming When He Needs to Be." This will be a shorter story than the others, mostly tying up the loose ends of Draco as Minister and Harry as Dark Lord, and the last story in the series.

**Burning Day**

_Chapter One—Pumice Stone_

"Sometimes I think Hogwarts outweighs even the Manor in luxury."

Harry snorted and lowered himself into the bath alongside Draco. The Prefects' Bath was large anyway, but it had extended itself obligingly a few more inches, so Harry didn't have to go down along the rim to get in. "You only think that because Hogwarts does whatever it can to make me happy, and your Manor is only an object."

Draco opened one eye. "And that's not a good reason for thinking so?" He sounded honestly puzzled.

Harry laughed and picked up one of the pieces of pumice stone that Hogwarts had supplied the instant it felt them came into the Bath. "Are you going to turn around so that I can scrub your feet, or not?"

"What if I _like _the calluses on my feet?" Draco asked, even as he thrashed his arms in the superbly warm water and drifted around so that his feet were floating near Harry's face. He couldn't hold onto his mulish expression, though, and burst out laughing at the sight of Harry's neatly raised eyebrow. Then he sighed and rested his head on the rim of the Bath, watching through half-closed eyelids as Harry scrubbed at his feet. "This is nice."

Harry nodded, but didn't say anything. It _was_ nice, a bit of domestic privacy shared with his lover. That Harry was the Dark Lord of Hogwarts and Draco was the most probable next Minister of Magic didn't matter right now.

"She would want you to be happy."

Draco was extending one hand that couldn't quite touch Harry. Harry shifted nearer so that it could rest on his shoulder, and went on rubbing at Draco's feet with the pumice. "She wouldn't," he said. "Not if she was her real self. She would screech in my ear and litter my pillow with dead animals because I wasn't giving her my complete attention anymore."

Draco grinned and tipped his head back again. "You're right."

Harry sighed, but this time, unlike most of the times he had sighed in the past few days, it was in contentment. Yes, he could brood about Persephone, his lost dark phoenix, as much as he liked. She had been his companion, the closest one he could imagine, formed out of fire and magic when a Death Eater's spell had tried to turn his own power against him. She had held part of his soul.

But she'd had some of the same problems with holding a part of his soul that a Horcrux did, and one of them was that she couldn't last forever without affecting him. Harry had learned that she was really more like an extended piece of himself than a living, breathing soul of her own, and he had unmade her during her burning day.

He'd unmade a lot of other things that day, too, including his reputation as someone who ultimately wanted peace and Edgar Gorenson, as he'd known a man who leaped through the Ministry from Department to Department, switching identities, and had made targeting Harry his business. Harry didn't know for sure if the time that Gorenson had held him and Persephone captive had changed anything fundamental about Persephone that made Harry unable to rescue her, but he thought the Ministry attacking on her burning day was a bit too much of a coincidence.

Gorenson had paid for it. So had Harry, but with Draco here beside him, bringing reports that not _all _of Britain had immediately turned against Harry, it was hard, at the moment, to care.

"You'll have a few new people coming to interview at your court, soon," Draco murmured, his voice lazy. "People who told me that they wanted to vote for me, but thought it was too dangerous after Tillipop stepped down."

"_After _Tillipop stepped down?" Harry shook his head. It was true that one of the worst attacks on Draco had happened then, but he'd had one before it, too.

"Yes, because they're afraid of that council they have in the Ministry right now in a way they were never afraid of Tillipop." Draco popped open a stern eye to regard him. "Now, can I tell you my news? And in the meantime, you can wash my legs."

Harry smiled, dropped the pumice back onto the edge of the Bath, and conjured a cloth. When he reached out to the nearest tap, foamy, bubbling, sweet-smelling soap poured out of it. "Sorry. You were saying?"

Draco waited until Harry actually covered the cloth with the soap and began to stroke down his legs before he shut his eyes and went haughtily on. "They said that they didn't think the council would respect their votes being secret, and they want some protection. So they're coming to you."

"Coming to the Slaughter Lord for protection," Harry murmured. It was one of the many titles that the _Daily Prophet _had given him in the past few days, although given the number of identities that Gorenson had maintained, they often chose one of his other names to vary the headline. Harry thought "Murderer of Manfried" was his favorite so far.

"Yes," said Draco. "If they fear the Ministry, they're hardly going to believe what the Ministry says of you, are they?" He reached out and flicked a harsh finger against Harry's wet shoulder. "You need to stop thinking that everyone thinks of you the way you think of yourself."

"I don't think of myself as mad and violent," Harry protested, and moved up so he could scrub Draco's back. "That's the popular perception we're encouraging, not the truth. I know that."

"But you blame yourself for Gorenson's death anyway." Draco had turned to the side, and his eyes were half-closed in pleasure, but they were clear. "You think that you could have handled it differently. When you were magically exhausted and grieving for your phoenix. You could have done something else." He held out one hand, palm up. "If it makes the Unspeakables stop going after you, and some of the others in the Ministry at least hesitate, I count it violence well-spent."

Harry frowned some more. "I don't grieve for Persephone," he said. "I was the one who chose to unmake her."

The Bath shivered and contracted around them so that the stone could support Harry's back at the same moment as Draco snorted hard enough to make soapsuds fly off his chin. "Right," he said. "So the brooding and the moping and the sighing and looking at ceilings is all a trick of my imagination, is it?"

Harry took a deep breath. "I grieve that I didn't think about it more earlier, how a phoenix who was supposedly her own independent creature too often did exactly the opposite of what I intended her to do. That was just too perfect a coincidence. I should have thought it through. I shouldn't have made her in the first place."

"I'm not one of your Gryffindor friends," Draco said, turning around and wrapping his arms about Harry's waist. "I'll listen to you and try to make things better, but I won't listen to you condemn yourself for no reason and say nothing just because you're right according to abstract moral principles. I say that you're grieving, and you have the right to grieve. I thought you agreed with me, or you would have flung yourself back into the business of your court already."

Harry hesitated one more time, and then brought his chin down on the top of Draco's head and wrapped his arms around him. "Fine, yes, I agree," he said. "But it's hard to think that her death and making in the first place are all the result of my own mistake."

"It doesn't seem hard for you to say, considering how you were going on about it a minute ago." Draco had his eyes closed, but his voice was sharp enough for anyone who really listened to it. "What you need to do is to stop looking at it from a self-blaming perspective. That's going to be the _real _chore."

Harry opened his mouth to argue with that, then sighed and let his head fall back against the side of the Bath. "Yes, I suppose so."

"He agrees with me, and I barely needed to argue!" Draco sat up and smiled around at an imaginary audience, bowing and extending his hands. "I won an easy victory over his tendency to scold himself! That really shows I'm fit to be Minister!"

Harry snorted and cuffed him. He would have used a little pinch of magic before, but his magic was still recovering from how much he'd used it over the last few days. "Prat."

"Better than some of the things you could have called me." Draco leaned back in his arms and gave him what was probably supposed to be a calculating look, but it was ruined by the gleam of fun in his eyes. "Now. Your prat would like to be made love to."

"Here?" Harry glanced around at the water.

"Unless you know some other place more suitable." And Draco opened his mouth and wagged his tongue at Harry.

Harry had to lean in and kiss him then; it was absolutely a requirement. And Draco went with it, laughing in delight as Harry steered him backwards in the water and arranged a comfortable cushion of bubbles that wasn't going anywhere for them to rest on.

Sometimes Harry thought of all the many, many things he could have done better since he had become a Dark Lord, the ways he could have handled situations better. He thought someone with as much power as he possessed had to do that, or things would get dangerously out of hand.

But sometimes, he was as allowed to make love and feel joy as the next person.

* * *

Draco woke with a start what had to be several hours later, from the coldness of the water and the sinking of the cushion of bubbles under him. He shook his head slightly and gripped the side of the Bath, heaving himself out of the water. There was no way that being immersed that long in a magical bath would hurt him, but he wanted to get warm and dry off.

The door of the Prefects' Bath creaked open. Draco looked up sharply. Harry had expressly forbidden any students to come into it while they were here, and most of them ought to have obeyed. They weren't terrified of Harry, whatever Harry thought, but they did have a healthy respect for him.

But it was Briseis who stood there, Harry's adviser. She only raised an eyebrow at his nakedness, and then turned and gestured with her chin at the corridor. Draco hastened to wrap himself in a large towel and follow her out.

Briseis stood there with her back turned to him, pacing slowly back and forth, She spoke without turning around. "He needs something to distract him from his brooding. I know that. But I don't have to like this."

She turned around and held out the _Daily Prophet _to Draco. Draco stifled a sigh as he looked at it. Harry's reaction to the paper was never predictable. Sometimes he laughed it off like the nonsense it was, sometimes he seemed to think that it was an accurate record of what the British wizarding world wanted.

A glance at the front page told Draco that this was likely to be one of those latter times. The photograph on the front page was split in two: on one side, him, leaning on Rosenthal's arm as she escorted him, tired and burned, into Malfoy Manor after Gorenson's attack; on the other, Harry standing with his hand upraised in front of the pile of charred bones that had _been _Gorenson.

The headline said, POTTER'S PROPHECY: 'CHALLENGE ME AND YOU DIE'

Harry hadn't said anything like that, of course; he had promised Draco, in veiled ways, that they would have a continuing relationship, but he had couched it as threatening Draco. Skeeter and the other reporters present had understood it in their own terms.

_Of course they did. _That was part of the plan, to make sure that no one but them and people they could trust would ever know the exact nature of their relationship. But Draco thought Harry would probably focus on the negative side of the photographs and the way he imagined people reacting, with fear and distrust, whether or not they actually reacted that way.

"I don't have to like the way that he looks at you, either," said Briseis.

Draco looked up rapidly. This wasn't something he had thought he would have to confront. Both Briseis and Rosenthal disapproved of him and Harry being together to a certain extent, but he had thought it was because they believed he and Harry would distract each other from their work. This sounded like something else.

"What do you mean?" he asked, when he saw that Briseis, like a true Slytherin, wasn't about to explain what she meant until explicitly asked.

"I mean that he looks at you as though you're the center of his universe," Briseis replied, her voice shading with distrust. "And that should be Hogwarts."

"I don't know exactly how he looks at me," Draco murmured, although he felt a tug deep in his belly at the notion that Harry might value him as highly as Draco suspected he valued Harry. "I can't discourage him from doing it if I don't really understand what he's doing."

Briseis clucked her tongue and flung the paper at him. "You know that he values you second only to nothing," she said. "I thought that Persephone, when she still existed, would keep him focused on his task, but now she's gone, and we're left with _you_." Her gaze swept him up and down, and now she was no longer bothering to conceal her dislike. "I don't know what will happen if he starts focusing on you more than his court."

Draco wanted to shout at her, to tell her that it was ridiculous to think that Harry would prioritize his relationship with Draco above his court, but he paused. He couldn't make Briseis see matters from the inside, as he did, and he wouldn't want to if he could. What mattered was what he shared with Harry, and he didn't want to explain that to anyone. He would prefer to be the only one who really understood Harry and what they shared.

But she needed some kind of reassurance. She was powerful in Harry's court, and could hurt him either with her efforts to push him in a deeper direction or with her leaving, if she grew too disgusted to remain.

"I doubt that will ever happen," Draco said, and made the rapid decision to share something with her that he didn't think Harry would mind her knowing. Or he might have told her already and she hadn't paid attention. "Didn't you know what he did when he realized that Persephone couldn't exist outside him?"

Briseis frowned at him. "I know what he did. He unmade her, and took the magic and used it to come back to life. He had intended to burn with her as a phoenix, but he knew he couldn't do that after she died."

"Where did he send that magic, though?" Draco asked, and when she shook her head, told her. "_Into the bond with Hogwarts. _He realized that his bond with Hogwarts was the most important relationship he had in the living world. He didn't live for me, he lived for Hogwarts and the people he'd made promises to here."

That might be stretching it a little, since Draco thought he had played some part in calling Harry back to the world, but Briseis's face was slowly clearing, and that made it worth the possible lie.

"You're sure that he sent it there?" Briseis looked around as though searching for some confirmation written in the stones of the walls. "I thought he would have needed all the magic to come back to life."

"You haven't noticed the wards strengthening in the past few days?" Draco asked. "The castle cradling its children even more closely? Those walls of light appearing on top of the castle's walls?" That had been what he noticed when he first saw Hogwarts from the outside after Harry's unmaking of Persephone, the shimmering ramparts of pure magic that rose on top of all the towers.

Briseis slowly nodded. "I saw them. I felt them." She hesitated. "As long as you're sure that you won't demand more of his focus than he can give."

Draco rolled his eyes. "I intend to be independent of him, you know, a real Minister, not his little pet. And he has to be independent of me, too, if my independence is going to happen."

Briseis eyed him, then smiled sourly. "Trust a Slytherin's ambition to be the heart of them."

Draco only gave her a slightly distant nod. The heart of him, he thought, was _both _his ambition _and _his love for Harry, but that was another of those things he couldn't expect anyone outside of him or Harry to understand. And really, it was for the best if they didn't understand. He and Harry had their private, shared rituals that couldn't possibly be important to anyone else, and they had to deceive the public. If that sometimes included deceiving their advisers as well, that was what had to happen.

"Thank you for informing me of your concerns," he said, taking the paper. "I'll explain the article to Harry."

And he vanished back into the Prefects' Bath, into the private world that he and Harry shared, where his Lord yet lay asleep on bubbles. Draco spelled the water warm again and slipped in beside him.

Reality could wait.


	2. Tossed Bread

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—Tossed Bread_

Harry strode into the Great Hall, nodding to the professors and students he passed along the way, as well as the people he had interviewed and welcomed into his court. There were fewer of them than there had been before he burned Persephone and Gorenson, he noticed.

Still, he wasn't going to count absolute numbers. He had interviewed a few people today, and he might welcome one or two of them. He wouldn't despair until he had some sign that everyone except maybe Draco and his best friends feared him.

He glanced up and caught Briseis's eye where she sat at the high table. She gave him a stern look. No mistaking the meaning behind that one. Harry had spent the time in the interviews that he had promised he would spend with her, signing documents and listening to more advice. He gave her an apologetic shrug and started to climb the steps.

He saw a piece of bread arching towards him out of the corner of his eye. It had come from the Ravenclaw table.

Harry reached out and snatched it easily from the air, as easily as he would have caught a Golden Snitch speeding past him. It was still warm and had butter on it. He brought it to his mouth and took a long, satisfying bite. He had got so caught up in the interviews that he had forgotten to arrange a break for lunch.

"_Yum_," he said, licking the butter off his lips and smiling at the student who had thrown it at him. "Thank you. But do you still have enough for yourself?"

The student, a tall, dark boy with spectacles who stared at him in stunned surprise for a few seconds, sat back in his seat and said, "Y-yes, sir. I mean—" He hesitated. Harry had refused to claim the title of Headmaster, and they all knew that he didn't like being addressed as "My Lord," although some people like Briseis could get away with it.

Harry waved his hand. "You can call me sir, the way you would a professor, and I think that's enough for now," he said. "I've taught a few classes, after all." He took another bite of the bread and climbed the final steps up to his seat.

"Well _done_, my Lord," Briseis said under her breath as she slid a document for him to sign across the table. Harry studied it, saw that it was a message to the centaurs offering them additional help in securing the Forbidden Forest against unwanted wizards wandering in, and groped for a quill.

"They had to try some form of rebellion," Harry murmured back to her. "And one that the castle wouldn't immediately stop. Although I'm surprised it was the Ravenclaws instead of the Gryffindors." Then he paused and glanced at the Gryffindor table, and saw the way they were huddled together, furiously whispering. "Oh, right. It'll be pranks with them. Probably be a tripwire near the entrance to my rooms."

"I think the Gryffindors respect you too much for that."

Harry glanced sideways at Hermione, who was sitting next to him. Her back was straight and her gaze fixed ahead on the tables. Harry rolled his eyes a bit. He had told her and Ron about losing Persephone and killing Gorenson, and she had been fine with that. Honestly, Harry thought she had found Gorenson so irritating that she was only a few steps away from figuring out how to kill him herself.

But since she had discovered how Harry was spreading his reputation of being a Dark and insane Lord abroad, and why, she had treated him with coolness. Harry didn't think she was about to run out on him again; that had been unusual even for Hermione, and she wouldn't have any reason for it. But she didn't think it was the right thing.

Harry twitched his hand, and the stones in front of the High Table shimmered. There were now wards on them that would prevent anyone more than a seat away from him from hearing. Since Ron was on his right and Hermione on his left, that was all he needed. He saw Briseis frown as she was excluded, but she had been calmer since her conversation with Draco the other day.

"What would you suggest for hiding my relationship with Draco?" Harry asked Hermione directly, leaning over to her. "Since even you expressed concerns that I might be influencing him unduly before you came back to my side?"

Hermione sucked in a breath and arranged her cutlery in a little dance in front of her, then shook her head. "I just don't think that encouraging people to fear you is the right solution," she said.

Harry took another bite of the bread in his hand, and showed it to her. "Fearing me doesn't keep some people from trying to see how I'll react. I don't think I've cowed them into the kind of crushed oppression that you're worrying about."

"Of course you haven't," Ron interrupted with a snort. "There's no reason to think they'd just shut up and go along with anything you're doing. When have people here or elsewhere in the wizarding world _ever _done that? Everyone has to have an opinion. People were afraid of you when they thought you were the Heir of Slytherin and an evil Parselmouth, but they still insulted you and flinched away from you and gossiped about you. They didn't shut up and scurry along with their eyes on the floor."

Harry smiled at him. That comparison wouldn't have occurred to him—well, not without some more time—but it was a good one now. "Thanks, Ron. That's exactly it."

Hermione shook her head at Ron. "But how can you rule with care and compassion if you're encouraging people to be afraid of you, Harry? That's what I thought you were going to do, and I just don't understand how making sure they're afraid of you contributes to that."

"Because the people who live here, or who decide that they want to try moving here, or who come to me for help because they're magical creatures and the Ministry isn't treating them fairly, aren't going to care about that," Harry said, and let his eyes touch on the Veela sitting at some of the House tables, and two centaurs who had come in that morning to speak to him about something later. Ombershade and Greenbush, two of the werewolves who had taken up semi-permanent residency at Hogwarts, were having a low-voiced argument off to the side. "They're going to take the risk and come anyway. Staying where they are would be worse. And there are people I'll never convince. I really did think that Rita Skeeter was on my side for a while, with the stories we were feeding her about Gorenson, but she turned on me as soon as she saw a more exciting story. It doesn't _matter _what I tell some of them, Hermione, they'll always think I'm horrible and evil. I might as well stop caring about them and frighten them just enough that they'll leave me alone."

Hermione was somber-faced but silent for a few minutes after that, eating her meal. Harry lowered the silence ward and spoke to Briseis about some more documents. They passed them back and forth over Ron's head. Ron just rolled his eyes and went on eating.

"Harry."

That was Hermione's hand on his arm. Harry nodded to Briseis and turned to Hermione. "Yes?"

"I believe you," said Hermione, and sighed and stared at her plate. "I just didn't want to because it's so _depressing_. You can save the world and not attack anyone who wasn't attack you already, and people will still distrust you."

Harry squeezed her hand gently. "I know, but like I said, I'm learning not to care about them. I care about Hogwarts, and my court, and my friends, like you and Ron, and Draco. I'll live with what I can't change, and change what I can inside my own four walls." He grinned as he thought of his first sight of Hogwarts from the outside, all those years ago. "Or more than four."

"That's something the centaurs have come to talk to you about, my Lord," Briseis intervened smoothly, and gestured to the centaurs, who had edged along the wall up to the high table. "They say that they would like sanctuary for some of their kind inside Hogwarts, the vulnerable foals."

Harry sat up at once. He had made an alliance with the centaurs, but he had thought it was for him to guarantee that their territories in the Forbidden Forest wouldn't be interfered with. "Is someone hunting them?"

Briseis nodded, no more than that, but Harry saw the thick tension in the cords in her neck. "Apparently someone has spread the word that young centaur hooves, mixed into some aphrodisiac potions, provide a cure for impotence."

Harry narrowed his eyes, and his magic snapped briefly into view around him, a coruscating image of white fire. He saw people gaping at him, but the centaurs nodded quietly at each other, as if reassured.

"Tell them I'll speak to them at once," he said, and stood up from the table. Briseis nodded and walked away to speak to the centaurs.

"At least take some food with you, mate," Ron muttered, sounding vaguely horrified as he started shoveling bread and cheese onto a plate. "You can't just walk away from meals and eat _nothing_. I don't care if they're chopping up centaur foals right on the spot."

"_Ron_," Hermione hissed, but Harry doubted that the centaurs had heard. He accepted the plate of food with a grateful smile and started down the steps towards the centaurs, already revolving his response in his head.

_Find out who's responsible for these rumors, set up wards around the Forest if they want them, confront whoever is responsible for those rumors if it's an identifiable person…_

The possibilities were enormous, along with the duties. Harry ripped into the hunk of bread with his teeth as he accompanied the centaurs between the House tables, and maybe because of that, no one tried to throw bread at him this time.

* * *

"You must realize that you are our only viable candidate now."

Draco took a long sip of his tea, prepared to his satisfaction by his most loyal house-elves, and watched Lucy Lenneal across the top of the cup. She had come as a representative of the Ministry officials Draco had been dealing with up until now, the ones who had been disenchanted with Tillipop's possibilities as a puppet early on, and now with the council that had set themselves up in the Minister's place until the election. But Draco had never dealt with her directly, and was a little unsure what to think of her.

Lenneal was a long, calm woman with a braid of thick black hair that coiled down the back of her neck and around her throat. Draco didn't know whether her hair flowed like that naturally or if she had to do a lot of work to get it to do so. He supposed the answer would tell him something more about her if he could know, but he could hardly ask, and he was content to listen to her low voice instead, and watch the motion of her fingers, just as long and with a flash of a gemstone in a grey ring on her left hand.

"I don't know about that," Draco said, when enough time had passed that Lenneal had leaned forwards, and he knew that she required _some _sort of answer from him. "I think you could easily choose one of the other candidates who haven't announced their retirement from the race yet, if a puppet is what you want." He met her straightforward gaze and smiled a little. He was forcing her to the speaking of things usually kept silent, but after the chaos of the race so far and the attacks by Gorenson, Draco was done going with the implicit goodwill of the people who wanted to make some political use of him.

"Not easily," said Lenneal, and her mouth worked for a moment, before she set down the cup of tea and nodded to him. "And let's face it, ease is almost as much of a requirement as intelligence at this point."

"Is it?" Draco held out his cup, and his elf appeared to fill it again. He didn't let his gaze stray from Lenneal's face, but neither did he allow himself to sound interested.

Lenneal nodded again. "The forces that depended on Tillipop are gone now. Or they've switched allegiance. He was becoming more difficult to work with, and someone would have probably arranged to force him out even if he won the election. They want someone they can depend on."

Draco shrugged a little. "They can't depend on me if they're thinking of double-crossing me or only using me as a stepping-stone to power. I hope you'll tell them that."

"I plan to." Lenneal had managed to close her mouth on whatever she might have added to that, and only paused for a small amount of time before adding, "Does this mean that you'll consider our petition seriously?"

"I'm always serious about taking power in the Ministry," Draco said, and smiled at her. "It's my choice of allies that might cause anxiety."

Lenneal sat up. "If you're talking about Dark Lord Potter, I'm not one of those fools who thinks we can't work with him. I _know _we can. I know his reputation as an Auror in the Ministry, and now, but it's my observation that he never attacked unless he was attacked first. Unless you count his original takeover of Hogwarts."

Draco raised his eyebrows. His estimation of Lenneal's intelligence had gone up a few notches. "Very well. But the fear that he engenders might make him hard to work with, and you just said…"

"We would work with him through an intermediary." Lenneal's gaze rested heavily on him. "I think that might most profitably be you."

Draco turned his head to the side, a little coquettishly. "Despite the threat he gave me that was reported in the _Daily Prophet?_"

"I always assume that a third of what's reported there is exaggeration." Lenneal's hands had folded themselves quietly in her lap. "And although he did threaten you, he didn't destroy you, as he did Gorenson. Attacking him directly won't work. And we need to deal with him _somehow_." She made a distressed little moue. "Or the international community is likely to think we're even weaker than they already perceive us, for being convulsed by internal wars twice in a generation."

"As long as I'm not required to attack him, or smuggle poison into him, or something," Draco said, "I'm your Minister."

Lenneal considered him for a second. "Is there any support we can give him that might make him more likely to consider leaving the Ministry alone?"

"You just pointed out that he's mostly a defender," Draco said. "If you leave him alone most of the time, that should be all that's required."

"But there are factions in the Ministry that won't do that," Lenneal said quietly. "I want to make sure that he can see different factions in the Ministry, ones who might act sensibly. Is a favor to you required, to have you speak favorably of us? Or to him?"

Draco took a long, dizzying breath. It felt as though his lungs had grown bigger, to fill his chest, permitting in all that extra air. He felt as if he had grown wings and could use them soar above the earth, instead of a broom.

_This _was power. This was what he had been dreaming of when he first began to run for Minister, and what he would have.

But along with power came choices, and Draco wanted to benefit Harry as well as himself. "Someone poisoned a batch of the Wolfsbane that is brewed in the Dark Lord's court," he said now, "and made it impossible to use. The assumption was that Gorenson was behind that, but there was no definitive proof. If you could investigate it and whether anyone in the Ministry is willing to brag about it or claim credit for it, then I could show him that certain people in the Ministry want to help him. The ingredients came from outside the court."

Lenneal cocked her head. "I don't suppose you have more information than that? I would be willing to help. I have some contacts in Knockturn Alley who both supply Wolfsbane ingredients and would know where to obtain information about poisons. But what you've given me is little to go on."

Draco met her eyes, and smiled. Lenneal had given him some power over her in acknowledging that she had those contacts, but from the prim way she sat in her chair, she thought the exchange worth it.

Draco tossed her a bone. "Lord Potter's potions brewer in this case was Hermione Granger. I think she might be willing to set up a private correspondence with you, with her Lord's permission of course."

Lenneal's relief at not having to deal with Harry directly was so great that Draco held back a snicker. Laughing at people for their reasonable fears—or fears he had to pretend were reasonable—was not the way to build a rapport with them.

In the meantime…

He nodded and said, "Yes, I think we might come, easily, to a reasonably satisfying accord. More tea?"


	3. Golden Crystal

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Golden Crystal_

"How recent are the rumors?" Harry thought he did a good job of sounding calm. Then he realized that the bookshelves in the corners of the library were rattling, and that two serpents of stone had risen out of the floor behind him and crowded either side of his chair, flickering their tongues out at regular intervals.

Sometimes, Hogwarts was a bit _too _responsive to his emotions and thoughts.

"They seem to be very recent." One of the centaurs who had come to visit him was a sorrel stallion called Reuben, his tail curled tightly around his flanks instead of lashing the way Harry had thought it would be. Then again, that tightness revealed tension, too. "We only heard of them the other day, when we caught an intruder in the Forest who had drawn near the foals' playground."

"Did he tell you who was spreading them?" The next thing Harry needed to worry about, and the one that was currently choking him like a bone in the back of his throat. He was going to find out who was spreading them, all right, and he was going to make _them _choke.

"No," said Reuben, and settled back on his haunches with a sigh. One of the things Harry had had difficulty in getting used to was that the horse part of centaurs' bodies didn't move exactly like horses; they could perform tricks with their legs and knees that would be difficult or dangerous for horses. Reuben was practically sitting now, one hand clasped in front of him, near a wide belt that was draped around his waist. "But he did show us this." He opened a pouch on the belt and took out an odd little sculpture that he handed over to Harry.

Harry took it and turned it over, staring at it. It looked like it was made of clear yellow crystal, maybe with some sunlight trapped inside it. It was shaped like nothing in particular, although it had a central ring and some sharp horns projecting out to the side. It was a little bigger than the center of Harry's palm, which would make it hard to carry comfortably.

Harry started to shake his head and say that he had never seen anything like it, but just then, the crystal flared, light reaching out from within it to touch the walls of Hogwarts. Harry drew in a sharp breath and ducked his head. That light was hot and magical, and it was pulling at—

It was pulling at his bond with Hogwarts.

His temper flaring incandescently again before he could consider whether it was a good idea, Harry brought his hand down, fingers spread. The magic of Hogwarts surged up around him, the stones shimmering and the floor heating up. It pushed back against the alien power of the crystal, forcing it into the outer edges of the sculpture. Then Harry tossed the thing into his desk drawer and shut it. That cut off its reaching out to the bond altogether.

Harry hissed and looked up at Reuben, who was nodding. "That is the reason the wizard was able to come so far into our territory without us sensing him," he said. "And without you sensing him either, Lord Potter. He bypassed the wards and the enchantments. He bypassed the protections of the stars." He set his chin on his fingers and stared broodingly at the desk. "We did not know what to do about it. It is wizard magic, but nothing we have seen before. So we bring it to you."

Harry glanced at the other centaur, a black mare who had introduced herself as Niamh. Her breasts bouncing about had been rather distracting at first, but he had got used to it. She was watching him with calm, cool eyes.

"You said that you were a wardkeeper?" Harry asked. He hardly knew what that was, but he could guess from the name and Niamh's presence here.

"Yes, Lord Potter." Niamh's voice was even more precise and correct than Reuben's. "I am the one who keeps the herd's wards and ensures that they are functioning correctly. I stumbled upon the wizard when I was going to investigate them."

"Because of a disturbance?" Harry sat up. At least that might indicate that the sculpture didn't work well.

"No," said Niamh. "As part of routine maintenance only. I saw that the wizard was creeping along, holding the crystal close above the ground. I saw it pass through the line of one of the wards without disrupting it. I do not know how it works, however. The wizard prepared to defend himself the moment he saw me, so I did not get a chance to examine it further."

"I suppose I can't question the wizard?" Harry looked back and forth between the two centaurs. He didn't really know if they would let even him into the heart of their territory where they must be holding the prisoner.

Niamh bowed her head. Reuben cleared his throat as the burden of the conversation shifted back to him and said, "Alas. We extracted the information on the rumors and his purpose from him, but the questioning was…vigorous. He did not even give his name before he departed into the realm that wizards inhabit among the stars."

Harry sighed. "He's dead?" Probably, but you never knew with centaurs.

Reuben nodded. "But I doubt that the death will cause you any political complications. If he did not even give us his name, you can hardly expect grieving relatives or his employers to be knocking on your door."

Harry had to admit that was true, but, as usual with centaurs, scraped past the main part of the problem. "But that doesn't prevent other people from trying to use these things to get close to your foals."

"I will be more vigilant in my wardkeeping," said Niamh, and scraped a hoof so hard over the floor that Harry felt the pain from the stones of Hogwarts. He reached down to touch them, and Niamh inclined her head. "And I will report any more violations or breaking of the boundaries to you at once, so that you may come and question the wizards."

"I don't know if you'll sense the violations, if you didn't sense this one," Harry said, as kindly as he could. Implying that their wardkeepers wouldn't find their enemies could hurt his diplomatic relations with the centaur herd in the Forest. "I think I should keep this thing and analyze it, instead. Post sentries along the Forbidden Forest for a few days. I can send some of my trusted people at the court if you think it would help."

Niamh touched her own side, where a scar curved; Reuben lowered his chin. "We would prefer to guard our own land, Lord Potter."

Harry just nodded. He couldn't blame most centaurs for being distrustful of humans. One like Firenze was definitely unusual. And this new rumor wouldn't help the cause. "All right. I'll let you know the minute I have something on the crystal."

Neither Niamh nor Reuben wanted to stay after that. Harry didn't blame them. They would be uneasy inside stone walls with so many wizards, even if they trusted Harry enough to report this to him.

Harry slowly opened his drawer and took out the crystal sculpture again when they were gone. This time, it didn't try to stab at his bond with Hogwarts. It just lay there, quiescent, and Harry knew that he would have passed it off as something harmless if he was looking at it in a different context. Maybe the kind of peculiar knickknack that some wizards liked to decorate their houses with. You couldn't even feel anything magical about it, if you were just holding it in your hands.

Harry half-closed his eyes, made sure he was in the chair and his feet were raised from the stones of the floor, and sent a pulse of his magic into the thing.

It was swallowed at once, and then beams of light began to reach out from the crystal again. Harry slammed it back into his desk drawer, and scowled at it. So. It was capable of absorbing magic, both that of centaurs and that of wizards, and it would react with reaching out to any instance of it. That was probably how it had eaten through several of the centaurs' wards instead of only one. Once it had consumed the first one, it would go on reaching until it had swallowed all it could find. The wizard would only have to put it back in a pouch or sheath to make it stop.

That was going to make it hard to track down the maker of it.

Harry smiled, knowing it was a nasty smile. Luckily for him, he had resources that not that many people did.

* * *

"Have you heard anything about the rumor that you can use centaur foal hooves in aphrodisiac potions?"

Draco opened his mouth, then closed it again. He had been about to tell Harry of his progress with Lucy Lenneal and the overtures she had asked him to make, but this question threw him off so badly that the only thing he could do was blink and start again.

"What?" he asked, as he draped his cloak over a chair that sidled up to receive it. "I haven't heard anything about that."

"That was all I wanted to know," Harry said, and stood up from behind his desk to pace back and forth.

Draco watched him, head cocked. He thought of and discarded many remarks, such as the one that Harry spent far too much time on magical creatures and the need to protect them, and far too much time in his office. Draco hadn't actually been in Harry's _rooms _that often, mostly because Harry was never in them. They raised a bed from the stones when they wanted to make love in his office.

Then Draco snorted. _They_. And that was ridiculous for the same reason that asking Harry to spend less time on magical creature causes was.

"What happened?" Draco asked. "Did you catch someone who wanted to cut up centaur foals to make a potion? What a _stupid _idea."

Harry stopped pacing and shot him an intensely gratified look. "I knew I could depend on you to have the right response," he murmured, walking across the room to him and catching Draco's lips in a deep kiss. He drew back and continued in a way that made Draco want to banish all talk of centaurs from his head. "You would see that it's a stupid idea without launching into the kind of fit Hermione did. I thought she was going to faint or something."

Draco had actually meant it was a stupid idea because it would be calculated to get Harry after you when he had taken on the burden of defending the centaurs, and because he knew several bits of Potions theory that suggested that kind of thing would never work, not because he cared that much about the morality of it. But he knew other things that he shouldn't say.

And not saying them got him kisses. He locked his hands on Harry's arms and returned the kiss with interest.

Harry wrestled with his clothes a second, then drew back and made an impatient gesture. Draco's shirt slid off smoothly over his head and landed on the same chair that held the cloak. A second later, his trousers and pants followed. Draco leaned back against the desk in nothing but his socks, and laughed.

"I suppose you can replace those if they got torn?" he asked.

"Of course I can." Harry was kneeling on the floor in front of him, and Draco caught his breath with a snap and a gulp. It wasn't everyone who could say that they'd had the Dark Lord of Great Britain on his knees for them. "Now be quiet."

Draco probably couldn't have spoken even if he wanted. He was learning a lot about the virtues of silence today, he reflected, as he spread his legs.

Harry shut his eyes right before he fastened his mouth around Draco's cock, as if he couldn't bear to see it coming. Draco knew it wasn't that, and watched in amused tolerance as Harry took him in completely, swallowing over and over. Draco's tolerance faded as soon as Harry's tongue managed to curl around a certain spot on the underside of his cock, and he grabbed onto the desk as he gasped.

Harry sucked him with the same patience and determination that he always showed when he made love to Draco, as if he was so worth spending time on that he blocked out the rest of the world for Harry. Every tangle and twist of his tongue, every sideways movement of his mouth, even the heat from the inside of his cheeks, said that. Draco had to lean forwards and put his hands on Harry's shoulders for support long before Harry was done, as much as because he could feel how devoted Harry was to this task as because he was losing his balance.

Devoted to this task, and devoted to _him_.

Draco came with his ears ringing and his hands trembling, and sank to the floor the moment Harry let him go, to stretch out and pant. Harry huffed softly and bent over to kiss him. Draco didn't mind, even if he _was _used to his lovers cleaning their mouths out first.

Harry laughed as if he'd heard the thought, which Draco considered wasn't impossible, for all that Harry wasn't good at Legilimency. "Just stay right there, will you?" Harry murmured, rolling above Draco and stretching out so that Draco's thigh was between his legs. "I want to rub off against you."

Draco folded his hands behind his head and watched as Harry rubbed, his head tilting back like Draco's had, his mouth falling open in an even more undignified way. Draco could feel the warmth against his leg, first hard and then spreading and wet, but his eyes were full of Harry's glazed eyes and lips parting in satisfaction and breathy groans. This was the perfect way to begin an evening, even if it had been a less than happy day for Harry.

When he was done, Harry folded gracefully down next to Draco like a cut flower, and lay there breathing softly. Draco stroked his hair, waiting and content to wait. Harry wasn't going to disappoint him.

Harry rolled over and lifted a hand to trace Draco's cheekbones. "How are you so good?" he murmured, then prevented Draco from answering by pulling down his chin and kissing him on the mouth hard enough to burn.

Draco went with it, but pulled back and shook his head. "What's good about lying there and letting you rub one off against me? You don't need any particular skill for that."

"But no one else could smell like you and lie there so perfectly," Harry mumbled incoherently, closing his eyes.

Draco thought he would go to sleep, and managed to arrange them so that he was lying with the trailing edge of Harry's robe beneath his head, and his arms wrapped around Harry. That way, he wouldn't wake up with a sore head or back in the morning, the way he had the last time they'd done this. The stones of Hogwarts would cradle Harry, but they wouldn't offer any special consideration to Draco unless Harry told them to.

But Harry started and opened his eyes long before Draco could consider drifting off to sleep. "It's awful, what they tried to do to the centaurs," he whispered. "And they were able to get past the wards into the Forest, too."

Draco opened his mouth in a yawn, but then Harry's words caught up with him, and he sat up. "Past _your _wards?"

Harry curled closer to him. "Yeah. And that means I didn't keep my promise to the centaurs that no one else would bother them in the future."

Draco shook his head. It didn't sound as though any centaur foals had been killed yet, or that would have been the first thing Harry told him, so he couldn't care that much about them right now. "Do you know how they did it?"

"You're going to make me talk about this _now_?" Harry rolled a single pleading eye at him.

"You're the one who brought it up," Draco pointed out, although he did lie down with his arm around Harry's shoulders again. "But I would like to hear more about what you found, if you know anything."

Harry nodded, sighed, and pulled away. Draco Summoned his own cloak and pulled it down on top of him to stifle some of the cold, then got up and followed.

Harry unlocked a drawer in his desk with a complicated wave of his hand before he paused and said, "This might be dangerous, so stand back."

_Dangerous, in the middle of Hogwarts? _But if it was something that could get past Harry's wards once, Draco reckoned it might be again. He stepped back obediently and watched as Harry pulled something clear and shining yellow out to balance it on his palms.

Draco felt all the breath leave his body as he stared at the thing, and he reached out to clutch the edge of the desk. Harry immediately spun around to face him. "You know what it is? What _is _it?"

"I've seen things like it before," Draco whispered, eyes locked on the reaching, stubby branches, like branches of coral. "Not the same color, but pretty much the same shape." He managed to drag his eyes away from the thing, and locked them on Harry's face. "Some of the Death Eaters used them to capture magic in the Manor. The Dark Lord was going to do something with them once they were all charged with enough power. But it was never enough for him, and I never found out what it was."

Stormclouds stirred in Harry's eyes. "I see," he said, and set the thing back in its drawer. "So the only people likely to have knowledge of these are former Death Eaters."

"Like Yaxley," Draco caught on, seeing where this was going.

"Like Yaxley." Harry nodded and stared down at the drawer. "And most of them are in Azkaban and only accessible to Ministry wizards. So the Ministry is interfering again."

And if the Ministry had any people with sense in it, Draco thought, they would have run a thousand miles in the other direction rather than stir the danger he saw then in Harry's eyes.


	4. One Hoof

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four—One Hoof_

"She's wonderful."

Harry had to smile as he sat down next to a breathless Hermione for a quick meal in his office. She'd been talking with Lenneal, the woman Draco had convinced to help them, for several hours now, and apparently Lenneal had an idea which of her contacts in Knockturn Alley could help them track down the poisoned Wolfsbane ingredients. In fact, Hermione was clutching a list of names. Harry was glad that things were going right for _somebody_.

"I'm glad to hear that," Harry told her, and sipped at his pumpkin juice with a grimace. He and Hermione had spent too much time talking before he ate, and the juice had gone flat. "And you think you'll be able to track back the ingredients to the exact person who distributed them?"

Hermione nodded, eyes glowing. "Of course, if that person did it because Gorenson told them to, then the real culprit is already dead," she added. "But maybe we can make them realize that it's still wrong and prevent them from doing it again."

Harry held back a cynical comment on exactly how likely Hermione really was to reeducate their opponents. "Do you think there's a chance Lenneal could help me track down the source of the centaur rumor, too?"

Hermione blinked. "I don't know. She says that she has most of her contacts in Knockturn Alley and the Dark apothecaries. Do you think it would have come out of there?"

"At least they would know whether people have been asking them about aphrodisiac potions and using centaur foal hooves in them lately," said Harry. "Yes, speak to her, please." He still burned with the desire to avenge the centaurs, but he knew that he wouldn't do well in an investigation like that. He was too recognizable, and he would thrash around in his anger and make things even more unsubtle than they already were. "I'm going to work on strengthening the wards around the Forest and Hogwarts."

Hermione frowned. "Do you want help?"

"You and Lenneal go on working together, for now." Harry squeezed her hand. "Please," he added, when Hermione opened her mouth as if to object. "I want to be sure that _someone _is doing something else to help the centaurs. My efforts to strengthen the wards might be useless, at least against the kind of artifacts that the Ministry was using to bypass them."

After a second, Hermione nodded. "If you want us to."

"I do, thanks," said Harry, and finally applied himself to his food. He doubted that Draco was letting doubts and worries make him nervous enough not to eat, even though this was the night when he had another major party, the last one before the election. And he had told Harry that he would start spinning the story of their "real" connection to each other at this party.

_Maybe he's not nervous, but I still wish I could be there, at his side._

* * *

"How do you feel, now that your victory is all but assured?" Skeeter's voice dipped sympathetically. "And now that you've mostly recovered from the wounds Dark Lord Potter dealt you when your Manor exploded?"

Draco took a sip of his champagne, letting his eyelids flutter as he looked down at the floor. Skeeter could take that as a sign of his modesty or his nervousness. Draco would be pleased if she did.

He was strangling his irritation with her and stirring up the right emotions behind the mask, but at least he was past the stage when he blamed himself for _having _those emotions.

"I feel that a victory would be the best solution to both problems," he said at last, "the problem of what's best for the wizarding world and the problem that Dark Lord Potter presents, as someone that we can't help but deal with. He's hurt me, but he hasn't slaughtered me yet, the way he did to poor Gorenson." He looked up then, and caught Skeeter's gaze, so she wouldn't get suspicious. "That's the way I have to think of it, you know? That there's always something worse that could happen to me?"

Skeeter's fingers twitched on her quill, and her eyes brightened. "Do you care to explain to the public any of your strategies for containing Dark Lord Potter yet?"

Draco looked around, ostentatiously making sure that none of the other people—reporters, pillars of the Ministry, pure-blood supporters, his parents—at the Manor party were near them. Skeeter obligingly cast an anti-eavesdropping spell.

"This is a strategy that I can only tell _you _right now," Draco whispered. "If you published it, it would lessen its effectiveness."

Skeeter pouted at him, and Draco could practically see her two main impulses fighting behind her eyes: the desire to know more about his strategy and be trusted with this secret versus her impulse to publish everything. "But you might let me tell the public the truth eventually?"

Draco hesitated, then nodded. "With time passing, I can snare the Dark Lord Potter more effectively. Finally, when you publish, he won't believe the story even if someone in his court insists that he should."

"Ah!" Skeeter whispered, her eyes brightening. "So you do intend to fool him?"

"Dark Lord Potter wants a victim," said Draco. "A _single _victim. Witness how he blamed everything wrong with the Ministry on Gorenson, even though lots of people have been involved in fighting him. And how he tortured Gorenson and burned him alive. That's the person he chose to focus on, despite everything else that went wrong."

Skeeter looked as if she was about to dance in place. "And you're going to offer yourself up as that single victim?"

_Remember that Skeeter is smarter than she looks, _Draco told himself firmly, and gave a modest inclination of his head. "I am. But I can't tell him exactly what I'm doing at first, because then he might kill me for trying to manipulate him." He let his voice sink. "By the time I tell you it's safe to publish, then I think I'll have him firmly enchanted. He'll blame me for everything. If anyone else tries to tell him otherwise, then he'll dismiss it as a ridiculous plot."

"A victim," said Skeeter. "A sacrifice." She looked like she might clasp her hands to her bosom, but that would mean putting down the ink and the parchment to do it. "You'll play the most romantic part I can think of."

_Romantic? _Draco did look at her uneasily, wondering if she somehow suspected the relationship between him and Harry. They had acted like that once in front of her, although things had changed so much since then that she had never referred to it again.

But Skeeter just went on beaming. "I'll be sure to keep what you told me secret until it's safe to release," she said. "Thank you."

And away she walked, almost on air, at knowing something that no one else in the party did.

Draco sighed and picked up a glass of wine from a house-elf, then went to refresh his nerves and his speech one more time before he made it to a bunch of Ministry people who wanted to know what their relations with the Dark Lord Potter would be like if he took over the Ministry.

_They know, at the bottom, that I'm their only real choice, the way Lenneal says._

And of course that was true, but that didn't mean Draco couldn't do his best to ease their fears, to make things smoother in the future for himself.

_And Harry, _he thought then, swallowing one more gulp of wine. _I'm doing this for Harry, too, always._

* * *

"Lucy thinks that she might have found something."

Harry started and glanced up. He had been talking to one of the people Draco had recommended for a place in his Court. Her name was Serena Lowell, and she clasped her hands on her lap, covered by a fancy blue robe, as she scowled at Hermione. Harry squeezed her hand and got her to smile at him, reluctantly, before he stood up.

"I'm sorry, Miss Lowell, but this interview will have to be concluded later," he said. "I do think that you have an excellent chance of entering my Court, though."

"Thank you, my Lord," said Lowell, and left the room with no more than a cursory glare at Hermione. Harry didn't think Hermione noticed. She was too busy almost dancing in place, blurting out the news the minute that the door closed behind Lowell.

"Lucy found a contact in Knockturn Alley who remembers having sold some Wolfsbane ingredients to someone named Imber," said Hermione, whipping out a long parchment full of names and plunking it in the middle of his desk. "And Imber is the name of one of Gorenson's aliases."

Harry sighed. It wasn't definitive proof, but at least it might lessen the paranoia of the werewolves who lived with him, if they knew that the one who had poisoned them was most likely dead.

Still, he wanted the definitive proof if he could get it. "But buying the ingredients for Wolfsbane isn't the same thing as poisoning the ingredients that got sent _here_."

"No," Hermione agreed. "But we know that Gorenson had his fingers into everything." She rolled up the parchment, staring intently at him. "I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that he suborned someone who was supposed to send the ingredients to me and slipped his own in instead."

Harry nodded thoughtfully. "Do what you can to find out, but good luck. Has Lenneal found out anything about the centaur foals' hooves and that rumor?"

Hermione's shoulders tightened, and her eyes dropped to her hands, contemplating the way they tied up the scroll. Harry sighed. "I'm not going to blame you if you haven't found anything," he said quietly. "You know that, Hermione. It's a hard thing to do, and I only asked you to do it recently—"

"I wasn't feeling bad about that." Hermione caught her breath with a gulp and looked up into his face. "I'm feeling bad because we did find something. Yesterday. But it was so horrible that neither one of us wanted to come and talk to you about it."

Harry clenched the back of his chair with one hand, and swallowed back as much irritation as he could. "All right. What are you talking about? What did you find?"

"We found a butchered centaur foal," Hermione told the center of the table.

Harry closed his eyes. "Where did you find it, and what did it look like?" Perhaps it was a little much to ask Hermione to relive that much horror for his benefit, but he would pull the memory from her head and place it in a Pensieve if she wanted, rather than make her go through it again.

It sounded as though Hermione was swallowing either the impulse to be sick or a dry sob. She whispered, "We found it as ingredients, chopped up. I don't think that either of us would have recognized it, but we went in disguise to the apothecary, and the shopkeeper showed it to us when we started asking about aphrodisiac potions. And I recognized the hooves."

Harry felt himself go cold. Slow and deep and cold, as if he had turned not only into a shark but the water that the shark was gliding through.

"Harry?" Hermione's hand was on his shoulder, but he felt as if it was on the other side of a thick wool coverlet. "Are you all right?"

"What apothecary was it?" And Harry's voice sounded like the growl of a dreaming dragon, he thought. His fingers flexed against the table, and small splinters fell off and drifted around in a circle. All around him, Hogwarts was thrumming with magic.

"His name is Garrick Killian," said Hermione, and she had taken a step back as though she needed to see Harry from a good distance in order to understand him. "What is _wrong _with you? I know you want to speak to him about this, but—"

"Damn right I want to speak to him about this," Harry said, and moved his hands in a complicated pattern. The stones of Hogwarts beneath his feet understood and opened up for him, dropping him into a tunnel that sped him through the stones like the tunnel that led down to the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry could have reached out and touched the Chamber as he went past it. He could have summoned a basilisk made of stone. He could have done a lot of things.

But he only wanted the tunnel to bear him to the edge of the grounds and the edge of his power, which it did. Then he closed his eyes and stood there, swaying a little, despite being blown by the cold wind of his rage.

The last thing he had gone charging into a situation with parameters he didn't fully understand, it had resulted in his capture. And even though he thought he had planned for the one after that, the one that had forced him to destroy Persephone, he had ended up misjudging it. He wouldn't be caught that way this time.

Besides, he'd neglected to get Apparition coordinates to the apothecary from Hermione.

He would go to someone who could help him. He would try to make sure that he didn't terrify her too badly.

Harry opened his eyes, knowing he was smiling, and unpleasantly, before he disappeared.

* * *

"Candidate Malfoy?"

Draco lowered his list of bribes and people who needed to be bribed with a frown. It was true he had given Lucy Lenneal, as someone who had worked with Granger and was working with Harry, permission to contact him privately by Floo if she wanted to, and bypass all the elaborate safeguards Rosenthal used to determine if someone should be able to contact him or not. But he hadn't expected Lenneal to casually use that access, either.

But from the way Lenneal had her jaw clenched, this wasn't a casual firecall. Draco leaned forwards and adopted the smooth manner that he thought Lenneal would expect from him. "Yes? What is it?"

"The Dark Lord was just here," Lenneal whispered, and seemed to realize a second later that Draco might not know where "here" meant. "I mean, in my office. He said that he had come to—to gather information on the discovery that I made yesterday with Granger."

"What discovery?" Lenneal winced. Draco rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to do whatever you think Dark Lord Potter did. But I do want to know what you found out, since you didn't see fit to tell me."

"I was trying to think of the right way to break the news." Lenneal threw her hair over her shoulder and finally seemed to realize, from his impatient glance, that she should settle down and give Draco the report. "The Dark Lord's associate and I discovered what I'm certain are the remains of a slaughtered centaur foal in an apothecary, Darkest Signs, owned by a man named Garrick Killian."

Draco breathed a curse. He knew Killian's name, although he didn't think he had ever been in his shop. But Professor Snape had bought ingredients there, and so had his father. Killian was an experienced Dark apothecary. He should have been smarter than to have ingredients like that in his shop _or _antagonize the Dark Lord of Hogwarts.

"And why did the Dark Lord need to come to you to learn this, when Granger presumably went back to Hogwarts?" Draco asked.

"She did," said Lenneal. "But he didn't know the Apparition coordinates of the shop or what it was called. He came to me to learn." She winced and shook her head when she met his eyes. "And I don't know why he didn't ask Granger. I suppose he thought there was the possibility that she might not tell him."

_And Harry wouldn't want to force her to tell him, even though he could. He just barely repaired their relationship last time he did something without telling her. This would destroy it forever. _Draco held his face immobile. "Did you give him the coordinates?"

"Yes," said Lenneal. "But he left only a few moments ago. You may still be able to catch him if you hurry. I can give you the coordinates of the shop if you don't have them—"

"Why would I be able to _catch _him?" Draco stood up with a snort even as he Summoned his cloak nonverbally and it settled around his shoulders. "You know that I can deal with him as England's future Minister, but that isn't the same thing as forcing him to stop and listen to me."

Lenneal held his gaze. "I think that you're capable of a lot more where it concerns Dark Lord Potter than you ever wanted us to know," she said simply.

Draco cursed, but only to himself. That was the worst part of having intelligent allies: then you had nothing to do but _Obliviate _them or live with it if they figured things out. And Lenneal seemed to have divined the relationship, or part of it, that lay between him and Harry. With luck, she wouldn't have thought it was love, though.

"I don't think I need to remind you of conclusions that you should keep to yourself?" Draco asked softly.

Lenneal shivered. "I just saw the Dark Lord of Hogwarts in all his glory. I still believe that he won't attack us if we don't attack him first, but h-he was angry. And I could see it." She swallowed. "I wouldn't be mad enough to oppose someone like that."

Draco nodded curtly and cut short the Floo call. He could Floo to an "abandoned" shop in Knockturn Alley that was actually a common destination for wizards who wanted to reach that alley without going out in the open and being noted by any Aurors hanging about. It would be faster than racing through the Manor to the edge of his grounds and his wards.

He didn't think it likely, actually, that he could hold Harry back from doing something to Killian. And he might not want to even if he could, because Harry might owe that response to the centaurs by virtue of his treaty with them.

Draco was just trying to keep it to "understandable vengeance," rather than "complete and utter destruction."


	5. Darkest Signs

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_Chapter Five—Darkest Signs_

Harry landed outside the apothecary, and wrapped layers of magic around himself into a Disillusionment Charm. It was hard to concentrate. His sight was wavering, and Harry didn't think that had anything to do with either his power or magical exhaustion. He was just so _fucking _angry, and the wavering moved back and forth in time to the pounding of his blood.

But no one seemed to have noticed him, so far. Two hags were walking down the middle of Knockturn Alley, both contributing to a conversation in which the word "blood" figured prominently. Two warlocks called to them from the other side of the alley, but neither hag turned around. The shop next to Darkest Signs was shuttered, a tall woman walking away from it with a satisfied smile on her face.

And in front of Harry was his target.

He looked it over, carefully. He might have come this far on impulse, but he would make sure, now, that this apothecary had no traps that might hurt him. And in the meantime, he would learn how he could most effectively secure vengeance on the idiot.

The shop was small, with smudged windows, like a lot of them in Knockturn Alley. The nearest window had been broken, in fact, and not repaired; Harry didn't know if that was meant to send a threatening message or not. The name hung in crooked silver letters above the door.

Harry closed his eyes and cast a complicated spell that he had first learned in Auror training. When he looked again, a tiny bird sat in the middle of his palm, a sparrow that fluttered and chirped at him. Harry nodded. It took off from his hand and flew around the back of the shop.

In a few minutes, it was back, and flew straight into the middle of his forehead, becoming transparent as it did so. Harry closed his eyes, receiving its impressions, recorded much like a Pensieve memory. There was a back door to the shop, but it led out onto another turning of Knockturn Alley deep in rubbish and dirt. Killian wouldn't go fast down that lane, and it didn't look like he used the door often, from the thick dust piled in front of it.

Harry nodded. He would be prepared in case Killian tried to escape that way, but it didn't seem like a big risk.

He dropped the Disillusionment Charm, and strode across the street and through the door of the shop, not bothering to knock.

* * *

Draco stepped out of the Floo and hustled to the door of the abandoned shop, not bothering to brush the soot off his cloak, although he had never not done it before. This time, he had something more important to worry about.

Then he jerked to a stop and lifted his head. There was drumming power around him, power he had felt so many times before that he wouldn't have noticed it at all in Hogwarts. But this wasn't Hogwarts, and that power didn't have a reason to be here.

Well, it _shouldn't _have a reason to be here.

"_Shit_," Draco pointed out to no one in particular, and flung open the shop's door, and ran.

* * *

Harry stood for a second as the door of the shop banged to behind him, and looked around. It was only a quick glimpse, but it was enough to tell him there were no wards or trap spells in the immediate vicinity—or none that were strong enough to harm him, anyway. Which meant none he needed to worry about.

Then he had to duck sharply as a Fireball Curse went soaring above him and crashed against the door. From the hiss of dampening spells, fires happened here a lot, and Harry wouldn't need to worry about one starting behind his back. He lifted his head, smiled in the direction of the counter the spell had come from, and strode forwards.

"Casting a curse at me?" he sang out. "That's not very friendly, is it?"

Another curse followed, although this one was a Freezing one instead of a Fireball one. Harry lifted his power in front of him and caught it easily, then dissolved it, instead of simply deflecting it the way a Shield Charm would have. That cost him a bit of power, and more than he would have had to use on the grounds of Hogwarts, but it looked fucking impressive—the little dots of ice collecting in midair, wavering, and then flashing into nonexistence.

A man with manky red hair and a long, rat-like nose stuck his head up from behind the counter and gaped at Harry.

"Garrick Killian?" Harry asked, and twitched his fingers. A small light began to shine from his magic, stronger than _Lumos _but floating in a ring around his head, so that it illuminated his face.

"Who the bloody hell are you?" Killian clutched his wand as though he still thought it could protect him.

Harry assumed the light wasn't strong enough, and obligingly strengthened it, then lifted a hand to his fringe, pulling it back to expose the lightning scar. "Your worst nightmare," he added helpfully, when Killian was still tense and staring and apparently unable to recognize him a moment later.

Killian blurted something so scared it wasn't even words, and darted backwards into the wall behind the counter. Then he grabbed a wire that hung down from the ceiling.

Harry didn't wait to find out what he intended to do with it. He went over the counter in an easy bound, and a second later he had Killian's throat in his hand and was holding him up above the floor with his legs dangling.

He could have done this with magic, admittedly, or in some way that didn't involve physically holding Killian. But he had magic strengthening his arms so he could do it in the first place, and he thought that counted.

Besides, from the expression that was creeping over Killian's face, he was more than intimidating the man anyway.

"I don't know what you're doing here," Killian whimpered, and struggled against him hard enough that Harry had to release his hold a bit, or Killian would damage his own throat. "I swear, all I _did _was sell ingredients to people who were part of your Court! If you didn't want them to have them, take it up with them and not me!"

"So butchering a centaur foal doesn't count as a crime to you?" Harry supposed he shouldn't have been surprised, but he had thought Killian would immediately guess why Harry was in his shop.

Killian stared at him. "It's ingredients, like anything else," he said. "Some of my customers wanted ingredients. I provided them. No one gets upset when I hunt Runespoors and Ashwinders!"

"If they lived in the Forbidden Forest, then I would," said Harry, and tightened his grip again. "The Forbidden Forest is under _my _protection. You went there and butchered a centaur foal?" He had thought it would be a little harder to prove that Killian was the one who'd killed the foal. At least his blabbing mouth had a use.

"It's not like they're human," said Killian, shaking his head back and forth as much as he could with Harry's hand still on his throat. "It's not like I killed a baby!"

Harry lowered Killian to the floor again. The man smiled, as if he suspected that Harry agreed with him, and swept a hand at his shelves. "As proof that I don't have any hard feelings against you, why don't you take anything you want? Free. I know you're not much of a Potions brewer, but you must have people in your Court who can do it for you."

"You should have known better than that," Harry whispered, and felt the flames of his magic begin to burn more visibly around him. "So what I'm wondering is, should I break all the bones in your body or simply turn you inside out and leave you for other people to find?"

"You shouldn't do either, because he's not worth it."

That was Draco's voice, from the door. Harry kept himself from turning in that direction and reaching out immediately; they were in front of an audience, someone who wouldn't have any reason to think that Draco Malfoy and Dark Lord Potter were anything but enemies, maybe reluctant allies.

Although, come to think of it, Harry wasn't sure that he was going to leave Killian alive long enough to spread rumors anyway.

"Candidate Malfoy," said Harry, turning around slowly, and keeping an effortless grip on Killian with his magic. "Have you come to defend this worthless killer? He violated my boundaries and the treaties I've made with the centaurs. I don't see much reason to leave him alive."

Draco took a step towards him. Harry could see the answer in his wide eyes as clearly as if he'd spoken it: _I've come to defend _you.

Harry appreciated the silent support, but again, he could hardly show that in front of Killian. He turned and gestured. A small ball of fire formed off to the side, bright white and glowing. As Harry moved his fingers, it spread into the outline of a man, hollow in the middle, and sized to fit Killian. Then it started moving forwards.

"You were saying?" Harry asked Draco.

"I hadn't said much of anything yet," said Draco. If he was worried about the fire and what it might do to Killian, he didn't show it. Killian had started whimpering, and Harry had to admit that was a _deeply _satisfying sound. "I do think you're being too hasty. Do you even know if this man did…whatever he did alone? You could get more information from him if you don't kill him."

_Very good, Draco. _It was the sort of political lie that Draco was good at spinning on the spot, and which Harry would have floundered hopelessly through. He inclined his head as though Draco had a point.

"I could torture him for information, perhaps," said Harry, as if he was considering deeply and Draco had the chance to persuade him otherwise. "And then kill him when I'm done."

"I thought you were a fair and just Lord." Draco sidled towards him. "I thought you only killed people for crimes they actually committed."

_Trying to make yourself into a witness? _But Harry knew that not enough people would believe Draco for it to be worth the effort.

That led to the inevitable conclusion that he really _was _trying to save Killian's life. Perhaps he thought that people would accept Killian's testimony most of all.

But Harry didn't intend to leave Killian in a position where he could just go and speak to newspapers like everyone else, even if he spared his life. "He admitted to butchering a centaur foal. His life belongs to me."

"Really?" Draco was beside him now, and although Harry knew he must have been at least a little nervous, he couldn't see any sign of that in the way Draco raised his eyebrows, polite disbelief almost radiating off him. "Because I would have thought that his life belongs to the centaurs, not you. With all due respect. My Lord."

Harry stared at Draco, and then nodded slowly. He should have thought of that direction earlier, and Draco was incredibly smart to have thought of it.

_But of course. He's a politician._ Harry turned back to Killian, who looked white enough that he probably would have fainted if Harry moved the fiery outline a few inches closer, and smiled. "What do you prefer, Killian? You could choose your own fate, you know. Do I have you?" He raised his hand, and the outline surged a bit nearer. Killian squealed. "Or do the centaurs have you?"

"I want to live," Killian whispered. "I'm sorry I killed the foal, I'm _sorry!_ But I can't go back and undo it. What do you want me to do?"

Harry narrowed his eyes. "Is this the way that you handle all the conflicts you might have?" he asked. "What if you sell illegal ingredients? Would you just tell the Aurors that you were sorry and you didn't mean to when they came into your shop and insisted on arresting you for selling them? Or would you acknowledge that they have a right to be upset?"

Killian stared at him as if he didn't know what Harry was talking about. Harry shrugged angrily. Probably, he didn't. He either didn't think of centaurs as human or Harry as human, or both. He expected to take some risks breaking laws, but the laws that protected centaurs were breakable.

Or something. Harry had to admit that he wasn't going to spend much time trying to fathom the mind of someone who killed centaur foals, and justified it by saying that it wasn't like he was killing human babies.

"Time's almost up," he said. "You can still choose, but take more than one minute and I'll choose for you. What is it going to be?"

Killian stared back and forth between the outline of himself and then the shelf where Harry could see what looked like the outline of a folded centaur hide, and swallowed. "How can you make me pick like that?" he whispered. "You're _merciless_." He really sounded like he was a few breaths away from crying.

"Time is up now," Harry said. "And since you haven't chosen, and I don't want to be bothered with you, I'm going to give you to the centaurs."

Killian uttered another wordless cry, and began to weep. Harry stepped back and dismissed the outline of fire, floating Killian towards the door of the shop. Draco got out of the way, without taking his eyes from Harry. He seemed to believe that he could tell Harry the right thing to do silently, by staring at him.

"I'm going to make sure that everyone knows what happened here," Harry said, both to Killian and to Draco. They could think about what messages they'd carry—well, Draco could. Killian wouldn't be carrying anything anywhere. "And I'm going to give the centaur foal a memorial. You may not have thought he was worth anything, but I do."

He gestured Draco out the door, and made Killian follow him. Then he stood in the middle of the shop and looked around at all the wooden cabinets, the barrels, the shelves, the flasks, the potions that simmered in fake display cauldrons, and raised his hands.

Not everything was made of wood, but even the things that weren't would burn well enough in the heat of the fire Harry intended to call.

This time, the flames had no shape, but simply poured from his hands and arched up to touch the walls, the floors, the shelves, the cabinets, _everything_, and everything simmered for a moment only before it burst into fire.

Harry stepped outside and conjured water, making sure that he soaked Knockturn Alley, the roofs and doors and everything else of the shops on either side and across the street from Darkest Signs, and the people who had come out to see what was happening. Some of them shrieked from that. Others shrieked at the sight of him. Harry honestly wasn't sure what was which, and he only looked at them. Some people immediately ducked back into their shops or houses; even this close, it was hard to tell the difference between the two.

Others drew their wands and assisted him in soaking everything down so that nothing else would catch on fire. A few tried to put out the flames. Harry shook his head. "You won't be able to," he said.

One of the hags who had been walking down the middle of the alley when Harry first appeared turned and looked at him. Then she bowed and said, "You heard the Dark Lord. Let's make sure nothing else burns."

Other people appeared more willing to listen to her than to him. Harry could hardly blame them for that. At least it meant that they weren't scrambling around anymore and would listen to _someone_.

He turned to Killian, who still hung in the air, and nodded to Draco. "I'm about to Apparate to the Forbidden Forest," he said. "Ministerial Candidate Malfoy, will you spread the word of what happens to apothecaries, or anyone else, who harms my allies?"

"I will," said Draco, looking him dead in the eye. "If you really think that this is the best thing you can do. My Lord."

"I think that the centaurs will make the decision," said Harry. "They've returned some people alive before now." He smiled, thinking of Umbridge. "And they may remand him to my justice. I've made the decision, since he wouldn't." He turned on his heel and Apparated to Hogwarts, pulling the still-whimpering Killian with him.

* * *

Draco, left with the flames on one hand and the people casting water spells on the other, had a few moments to decide what he ought to do, before those people started coming up to him and demanding answers.

And he decided that he was going to do the best he could to defend Harry without lessening the fury of his vengeance. He knew the fury was part of the _reason _Harry had done this. Fewer people would hurt the centaurs if they thought there was a chance that they really might suffer for doing so.

"Candidate Malfoy?" The nearest hag had come up to him. "Does the Dark Lord mean it, that he'll hurt people who hurt the centaurs?"

Draco nodded and faced her. "He does," he said, and that gave him the direction of his own speech, the thin line that he needed to dance.

He and Harry might be secret allies, but it was still up to Draco to support him and not undermine his decisions. And Draco could find little impulse in him to care about what happened to Killian. It was what the public might say about Harry because of that that he dreaded.

_On the other hand, we've already decided to live with that. _


	6. The Clever People

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_Chapter Six—The Clever People_

"You didn't say that you were going to bring us such a prize." Niamh's voice was soft, but her tail coiled around her flanks as though she was using it to whip herself.

Harry nudged Killian with his foot. He had bound him with both magic and rope so there was no chance he could break free and harm any centaurs before they could subdue him. "Until today, I didn't know that my people would be able to track him down so easily. But although I know he killed a foal, I don't know how he's connected to the other people who were trying to sneak into the forest." He looked at Niamh. "I was hoping that you could find out for me."

Niamh inclined her head, without a smile. "If you do not care what we do to him, we can find out much."

"I didn't care what you did to the last wizard who violated your boundaries and territory," Harry said. "Although I was angry enough that I nearly burned this one to death. One of my colleagues managed to remind me that you have a better claim to his life than I do."

Niamh had been bending down to check on the knots that tied Killian, but she looked back up at that. "I would like to meet him."

"I'll bring him if he agrees to come," said Harry. Killian was still alive, and would know it was Draco Harry was speaking about, and while Harry highly doubted that Killian would come out of the forest and be able to talk to anyone about it, he was still going to be cautious. "It might not be politically advantageous for him."

Niamh nodded, then did a complicated folding trick with her legs that left her kneeling down but still able to reach out and use her arms fully. She heaved Killian onto her back, draped across her withers. He moaned and tried to garble out something, but Niamh didn't seem inclined to pay attention. She stood up instead, and nodded to Harry. "Thank you for bringing him to us. We will see that he pays for the foal's death, and gives us the information before he dies." She cantered into the Forbidden Forest.

Harry listened to the noise of her hoofbeats and Killian's moans fading, and felt viciously satisfied. Then he sighed and turned his back on the forest, making his way towards the castle.

Briseis met him just outside the gates, shaking her head. "Please tell me that I'm not going to have another political crisis to control."

"No," Harry said. "I did think about killing the apothecary, but Draco stopped me. So I burned his shop to the ground and ensured no other shops would be burned, and then took Killian and gave him to the centaurs."

Briseis considered that, then nodded. "That might be for the best. We need you to maintain somewhat of a threatening image, so that our enemies don't simply start attacking the Court again."

"I agree." Harry turned and fell into step beside her. "Now, tell me about the new arrivals I can see you're bursting to mention."

"It's sometimes creepy that you know that much about me, my Lord," said Briseis, and then held out a sheaf of papers. "There are a lot more in the last few days. I don't know why. I would have thought they would start staying away once they heard about your new reputation."

"Maybe some will once they hear about the burning of Darkest Signs," said Harry absently, and flipped through the top papers. "But right now, there are so many people who are uncertain about that council in the Ministry and their ability to control anything that I'm not surprised we're getting more immigrants." He paused on seeing a name on the paper in front of him. "Nott?"

"Not what, my Lord?"

"No, the _name_," Harry said, and held out the paper. "There was a Slytherin named Theodore Nott in my year. I don't recognize this name, though. Hortenisa Nott? Do you think she could be his sister?"

Briseis looked at the paper with the slight frown that Harry knew meant her mind was really racing in concentration. "Yes, I think she is. She says that she wants to immigrate to the Court because you treat Slytherins fairly." She looked sideways at Harry. "Considering that I _am _high up in your hierarchy and you've shut down the House rivalry that used to flourish at the expensive of the Slytherins, I think that's right."

Harry nodded. "Maybe Draco can give me tips about how to handle her, if I think the interview with her doesn't go the way I want it to." He pulled Hortensia's parchment to the top of the pile. "Tell Miss Nott that I'll interview her next."

* * *

"Do you think that going to the Dark Lord's Court would really benefit us?"

Draco sighed. He had answered almost a hundred questions from various people in Knockturn Alley since Harry had burned Darkest Signs, and there seemed to be no possibility of getting away anytime soon. Even the hags and warlocks and other people Draco had thought would avoid him, since he was running for Minister, had approached him.

On the other hand, they had seen him speak to the Dark Lord of Hogwarts without bad consequences. Perhaps they thought that was enough to make him sympathetic to the Dark.

"I don't know," he told the hag who had asked him that last question. She was done up to her eyes in a thick cloak and hood that hid everything about her, even the color of her hair. She had black eyes, though, he could see that much. "You have to consider that it would prejudice some of your family against you, if they're on the Ministry's side, and that the Ministry might seize your property if you do it."

The hag waved a hand. "All my property is the sort that can be carried on my back." She looked deeply into his eyes. "And I know that I have skills that would prove of value to the Dark Lord's Court."

"Really?" Draco knew hags were skilled with Dark spells and potions, but Harry had people around him who could do that already. "Like what?"

"I see more than most people do," said the hag. "Call it the Sight if you wish. I never have. I see that you and the Dark Lord are closer than you like people to think, and that the main reason the Dark Lord did not destroy that idiot today was as a favor to you."

Draco's hand shifted to clench on his wand. The hag cackled. "And it wouldn't do any good to curse me, either, boy. I can melt away and be gone much more easily than some of these fools."

Draco released his wand with a sigh. There was no way he could know her name when he hadn't seen her face, and he thought a hag was one of the last people who would go to the Ministry with news of his connection with Harry, anyway. "What do you want?"

"Sometimes even wanderers long for a home. I've been content with wandering a good long time, but I could fancy a Court." The hag spread her hands. "Put in a good word for me, and I'll use those eyes on your enemies."

"Fine," said Draco. "But just because I put in a good word doesn't mean the Dark Lord will accept you. I might be able to—calm him down, sometimes, but that doesn't mean I control him."

"Why would I want to serve a Lord someone else could control?" The hag cackled again and turned away. "Tell the Dark Lord to look for Nightshade when he wants to speak for me."

The people who'd been waiting to talk to Draco almost melted out of the way when Nightshade walked past them. Draco stared, then snorted. At least he thought he'd have less trouble finding her when he wanted to.

* * *

"Will you tell me why you want to enter my Court?"

Hortensia Nott looked a little like Theodore, or at least Harry thought so; he had to admire he didn't remember her brother that waell. She was tall and long and skinny, with a nose to rival Snape's. She drew her robes around her at all times as though she expected the floor to be crawling with dirt and diseases. She examined Harry's face as if all the dirt and diseases focused there, then nodded.

"No one will hire me for the work I want to do in the Ministry," said Hortensia, her voice also thin and her hands working restlessly in front of her. "And it is not a work that is easy to do outside it. I must compete with others in the same field. I wish to be in a Court where my work will be valued and rare."

"I have people who can brew potions here."

Hortensia paused, and then her hands stopped working. She sat up. Harry held back the urge to laugh. Yes, he had read her right. She wanted to be challenged, and she took blunt honesty as part of that challenge.

"I brew poisons," she said. "And I can work out cures for most of them. But supplies are expensive, and the Ministry won't fund research into creating poisons. They only want cures. They're ridiculous. How can I work out how to combat poisons unless I know what goes into making them? And the truly new and experimental ones are invented mostly for assassination attempts. It would be useless for me to never do anything in that line. It would leave me facing a weapon compounded of ingredients that I did not understand and could not counter or trace back in time."

Harry cocked his head. "Very well. But how do I know that you wouldn't turn on the other people in my Court and use your poisons against me?"

"How well will they treat me? If someone is prejudiced against me for coming from a Slytherin family and spits on me, then I would be more tempted to use a mild poison that would cause them some stomach pain, at least. Not all poisons are fatal," she added, probably because Harry could feel his eyebrows rising. "I am a master of the ones that are not."

Harry leaned back and considered her. It was true that Hermione and Lucy could use some help in tracing back the ingredients of the poisoned Wolfsbane, and Harry would like someone in his Court who counteract it if the werewolves ever suffered from the same fate.

But he didn't know how well someone who talked intensely about her love for poisons would do in his court. "What about people who distrust you because of what you love to do?"

Hortensia shrugged. "If they distrust or fear me enough not to attack me, I don't care. It's only a problem when they decide that my work means I need to be destroyed."

"I don't know if _I _could trust you," Harry said, and stood up to pace back and forth across the room. It still felt empty without Persephone on her perch, preening sometimes and giving him a stare that told him how pathetic he was other times. "That would be the most important factor in whether I could give you shelter. How stupid would I be to invite an enemy right into my home?"

"The magic of Hogwarts answers to you, I'm told."

Harry glanced at her. "Yes, it does. But I don't know if I could command it to stop me from ingesting poison in time."

"Set it to watching me," said Hortensia. "Portraits or whatever else you wish. The very stones can watch those you tell them to watch, I've heard. Very well. But it can act against me and attack me if I make a hostile move against you."

Harry frowned and didn't answer. In truth, it was a clever answer, and it impressed him with Hortensia's determination to work in an environment that was literally hostile. But he didn't know if Hogwarts's magic was intelligent enough, put bluntly, to recognize when Hortensia was concocting a poison for use against him or someone else in his Court.

"Very well," he said at last. "I'm going to need a magical oath from you that you won't use poisons against me."

Hortensia paused expectantly, and then said, "Why didn't you require the same vow against me using any poison against the members of your Court?"

"Because I don't have control of them the way I do of Hogwarts and my own reactions," said Harry. "If someone attacks you, you deserve the right to defend yourself. What your vow will say is that you can't _fatally _poison anyone in my Court."

"I was told that I could trust you. I'm glad to see my informant was right." Hortensia drew her wand and unhesitatingly held out her wrist. "Who will you invite to be our Bonder?"

"It doesn't need to be an Unbreakable Vow. I was thinking more of a blood oath." Blood oaths blended back into their maker and could turn Hortensia's veins against her if she broke it. Harry thought that pain was a better lesson than death, the way that being sick to their stomach might impress someone more than dying.

"You think like one of us, after all," said Hortensia, and smiled at him. "They'd told me that you did, but I wasn't sure."

Harry shook his head and gathered up the magic of Hogwarts, surrounding Hortensia's chair with it in a silently orbiting cloud of grey and green particles. Hortensia watched it calmly, politely, without moving. Harry raised his hand, and the particles settled until they were drifting around her. "Us? Them? What do you mean?"

"I meant the clever people," said Hortensia, drawing her sleeve back to bare her arm, "mostly former Slytherins. But not all of them are. And by them, I meant the same people, the ones who told me that I should take my chances here."

"These particles of my magic are going to go into your blood," Harry told her. "Your idea about having my magic watch you is a good one, but it's going to watch you from the inside. And it'll react defensively if you try to hurt me, or kill anyone inside the Court's borders."

Hortensia smiled again. "I can see that others of the clever people will want to come here once I tell them about this," she said, and made a little incision in the skin of her arm with her wand. The blood trickled out, and Harry shook his head and directed some of the particles of magic down into her blood. Hortensia laughed. "It tickles."

"You're talking about it like it's an honor," Harry said. "That's not how most people would think of it."

Hortensia looked him dead in the eye. "Then most people are stupid."

Harry laughed in spite of himself. "Maybe I can learn to think like you," he said, and lit the particles of his magic with a touch of his will. He was certain that they would still function even when separated from the rest of his magic and surrounded by blood now. Well, reasonably certain. "That this is an honor, and that my magic will comfort some people instead of upsetting them."

Hortensia still hadn't blinked or looked away. "You should always think that, my Lord. Why wouldn't you? Your magic is strong enough to protect you from the consequences of any mistakes you do make, and then you can avoid making them in the future."

Harry thought of the centaur foal. "My magic isn't strong enough to protect everybody."

"Protect who you can. Stay alive to defend the rest." Hortensia lifted her arm. The blood under the surface of the skin sparkled and blazed with light. "Should I make the oath now?"

"Yes," Harry said, feeling as though she had punched him in the stomach, but with her attitude more than her words. "Say this: I will never try to harm Harry Potter in any way, direct or indirect, and I will not use any of my skills against any members of his court fatally, and only use them at all against other members of his Court if they attack me first."

Hortensia nodded and repeated the oath word-for-word, other than substituting in "my Lord" for Harry Potter. Harry supposed the oath would accept that. At least, there was no change in the soft sparkle of his magic in Hortensia's blood. He'd take it.

Hortensia stood up after that and asked, "Where can I move in? When can I move in? I want to bring some of my poisons and equipment with me as soon as possible, but I need to buy more ingredients before I potentially cut off contact with other markets."

"There's the Forbidden Forest, if you can go into it without violating the centaurs' territory," Harry said. "And I have to forbid you from chopping up magical creatures."

"Non-magical plants are the best ingredients for many of my poisons in any case," said Hortensia. "You will not regret this decision, Lord Potter. I can be loyal to those who will back me and believe in me." She departed in a swirl of skirts.

Harry leaned back against his desk, and thought some more. He wanted to protect his people from harm. One reason he had been so angered by the death of the centaur foal was the thought that he had failed in doing that.

But when it came to him, and taking risks accepting new people into his Court, and making alliances…yes, his magic could enforce order if he had to. And he could discourage people without killing them, or even binding them. Just frighten them, and that changed the game. Already, they were attacking his people instead of him. He didn't much like that, but at least it argued that they were too fearful to go after him directly.

Something he did was working.

Harry grinned a little. He and Draco had thought he would have to manipulate the public through fear of retaliation and Dark magic alone. But what if he cultivated another image? Of someone who could attack strongly if he had to, but was otherwise above it all, other than for a few sharp remarks?

Yes, that might be worth doing.


	7. Enchanted Pebbles

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—Enchanted Pebbles_

"You need to look your best today. You know that."

Rosenthal's voice was so harassed that Draco closed his mouth instead of giving her the taunting reply he had been about to issue. He simply nodded and let her fuss around him, now pausing to stare intently at his robes, now studying the fall of his hair. She finally stood back and shook her head, eyes sweeping him head to foot.

"I can't find anything wrong with your appearance," she said. "Even though I'm sure that someone will try to find it."

"If they do, then you can take comfort it wasn't your fault," said Draco, and smiled at Rosenthal. She didn't smile back, which was unusual enough that Draco felt compelled to add, "Have you already heard something that made you uneasy?"

"No," said Rosenthal. "Nothing specific." She fell silent again, still frowning, and Draco waited. He knew that her political instincts were some of the most trustworthy he'd run across. He wouldn't have employed her otherwise. "It's simply that—that I don't think the Ministry, or your enemies, if you want to detach them from the whole Ministry, will be content to see you as the only viable candidate for Minister."

"Here's the part where I reassure you that they don't have a choice, and they know it," said Draco, adjusting the hang of the lace at his cuffs. Rosenthal made a face at the result, but it was the only way Draco could keep his hands free to sign documents or wave gracefully. "But I can't, because I agree with you."

Rosenthal blinked, then seemed to regret the emotion she had let slip out, and stood up straighter. "You do?"

"Of course." Draco gave her an indulgent smile, and moved towards the door that led out into the gardens, closest to an Apparition point from the Manor. "I know that sitting back and letting me take control, then trying to undermine me later on, would be the politically expedient thing to do, but our enemies haven't shown themselves as all that sane."

Rosenthal thought about that as she paced after him, then nodded abruptly as Draco opened the door. "As long as you remember that. I'll have some extra safeguards in place, beyond the visible ones."

Draco nodded, and slipped a hand into his pocket to clutch the smooth pebble Harry had given him yesterday. It contained a bit of the magic of Hogwarts. It couldn't surround and protect Draco as effectively as Harry could have if he was _inside _the walls of the school, but it could raise a defensive shield that most spells would fall back from.

_Most is not all, _Draco thought, and remembered the fact that Gorenson had had access to the Department of Mysteries and the artifacts there.

But staying in his house and giving in to his paranoia wasn't an option. Draco made sure that his strides were long and smooth as he headed for the Apparition point, and that he paused before he Apparated to make sure Rosenthal could adjust the hang of his lace to an angle they both agreed on.

* * *

"Where do you think you're going? I thought you'd like to hear what Lucy and I discovered on the poisonings." There was a pause. "And Hortensia. She was more useful than I thought she was going to be."

Harry stepped back from the tunnel that Hogwarts had opened in the wall and focused on Hermione. "And you can't explain those things you found to me when I come back?"

"I would be less worried if I knew where you were going." Hermione clutched her notebook to her chest and stared at him with shadowed eyes.

Harry discovered that he could still smile when he concentrated on it. "I'm going to watch Draco's speech where he calls for an end to the hostilities between the Ministry and the Dark Lord of Hogwarts, and begs them to accept the peace that he can secure if they elect him as Minister."

"I thought Ron was going to watch that speech." Hermione's fingers tightened again. "I distinctly remember him talking about it at breakfast. He was grumbling about how boring it would be."

Harry sighed. "I'm not going to be watching openly, of course. I would scare everyone except Draco out of their minds if I showed up as myself. I'll be under a glamour. And you can be sure that my magic is strong enough to provide a good one."

Hermione shook her head. "That's not the point. You're still venturing outside the protection of Hogwarts, and you know what happened last time."

"I destroyed an apothecary who'd been using centaur foals as his potions ingredients?"

Hermione flushed. "I meant the time before that, when Gorenson captured you."

Harry sighed and toyed with the pebble in his pocket that was linked to the one Draco carried, and would let him establish an even stronger defensive shield if someone attacked Draco when both stones were close enough together. "I agree that it was a stupid thing for me to do, Hermione. But that very experience proved to me that I needed to be more cautious, so now I will be. And I managed to escape on my own."

"We've risked so much on your safety," Hermione whispered, "not just me and Ron, but all the other people who've come to Hogwarts and allied with you, or become part of your Court. Can you sacrifice the chance to keep them safe because you want to see Malfoy speak?"

"I don't think of it as sacrificing them for Draco." Harry winked at her when she flushed more deeply, because he knew the deeper concerns under the surface, the concerns that she probably wouldn't let herself express because she knew he would get angry. "I think of it as contenting me so that I don't get snappish doing all these endless interviews. And preserving the balance between the Ministry and Hogwarts. If I'm there to stop someone if they try to assassinate Draco, that might increase people's trust in Draco, and their conviction that they can elect him Minister and stay in the wizarding world. They don't have to come here, even if they're afraid, if they trust the person in charge."

"In charge of the rest of the wizarding world?" Again Hermione gave him a complex expression. "You know that the Minister is less in charge than most people think."

"But Draco won't be that kind of Minister." Harry cast a _Tempus _Charm. "Look, Hermione, I do have to hurry if I don't want to miss the beginning of Draco's speech."

Hermione shook her head and said something else, but Harry had vanished into the tunnel. He knew her concerns, and he shared them, to a certain extent. He would never be as casual about leaving Hogwarts as he had been before Gorenson captured him.

But a Dark Lord who was caged up in his castle all the time was no good at all. He had to at least prove that he would come out to defend his people, the way he had when he attacked Darkest Signs.

The sooner he established that new personality he had been thinking of the other day after he interviewed Hortensia, the more he could balance his power and his indifference to a lot of affairs in the wizarding world that didn't touch on his Court, the happier he would be.

He created the glamour for himself that he would use to blend into the crowd on the way down to the edge of the wards, and Apparated the moment he was beyond them. His body rang with soft excitement.

_And the better a lover I'll be, too._

* * *

Draco took his hand out of the robe pocket and off the pebble that Harry had enchanted for him when he saw how sternly Rosenthal's eyes were fastened on him. He had promised to be good, hadn't he? And that meant not looking like he was dreamily staring into the air and ignoring the claims of the public on him.

He looked out over the vast crowd that had assembled around the edge of Diagon Alley, carefully out of the way of the shops' doorways, but crowding into the front doors of restaurants that were happy to have the increased business. A lot of people had ice cream cones or sandwiches or glasses of pumpkin juice in their hands.

And for the first time since he had started making these speeches, Draco thought the majority weren't reporters or Ministry employers. They were ordinary witches and wizards who wanted to see what he was all about, and hear him speak. The people who would elect him, maybe, if they decided to vote.

Draco looked from face to face, slowly. He couldn't possibly look everyone there in the eye, but he was going to make a spirited attempt.

Some people waved at him, or smiled. Other people scowled, but Draco was going to do his best to ignore those. He would always have _some _detractors. Getting rid of them was as impossible as expecting all of Harry's enemies to fall down dead, just because it would be convenient.

Besides, if he played his cards right, then he could use his enemies to make himself look good.

"You're here today to see me speak," he said. He had just caught sight of Weasley's red hair and rolling eyes, and he addressed himself specifically to Weasley for a moment. "Not all of you are here for the same reason, but that doesn't matter. You can still _listen _to me. And if you make a response that shows you've listened, I might respect it, even if it opposes me."

Weasley gave him a more considering look after that. Draco smiled. He had always done better with small audiences, one reason that his father had thought Draco's decision to run for Minister was crazy. But he could make one person into a substitute for the larger audience, and he thought he would do that with Weasley right now. He might as well perform _some _service other than just representing the Dark Lord of Hogwarts at Draco's speech.

"I want you to know that I understand your uneasiness about the Ministry. One day, you had what looked like a normal election, though perhaps with some more drama than usual. And then the incumbent Minister announced his retirement, the Ministry appointed a 'council' to work in his place, and there were Unspeakables running around as though they owned everything."

A few other people were relaxing, responding to his informal tone. Weasley's expression hadn't really changed.

"But I can promise that I'll bring an end to that," said Draco. "I can make tomorrow look like today. And that's something no other Minister can promise you."

That caused a stir in the crowd that made Rosenthal tense, but Draco stayed calm without much effort. He didn't think _that _kind of stir would precede a serious attempt to kill him.

"Why?" demanded a woman who probably was a reporter, just from the way she held her hands as if missing parchment and a quill, although she didn't wear the official robes or insignia that would have marked her as affiliated with one of the papers. "Why do you think that you have this strength, when you've never showed it so far?" She folded her arms and looked around, as though she was trying to gather support, or maybe just approval.

"Because I'm flexible," said Draco. That got some doubtful looks at his arms and ankles, which made him want to laugh. But he maintained his calm look and his silence, and in a few seconds, they went back to paying attention to his face. "I mean that I can work with people who might make enemies of other Ministerial candidates, or this council. I can even work with the Unspeakables. I don't hold them responsible for what Gorenson did. I'd rather find ways to not tread on their territory, and learn how we can have a productive relationship in the future Ministry."

_There. _That ought to help any spies for the Unspeakables in the crowd—and Draco was sure there were some—to make up their minds.

"Anyone could say that," the reporter challenged him. "You still haven't told us who you can work with that no one else could."

Draco smiled. He really couldn't have asked for a better opening. "The Dark Lord."

That made a few people near the edges of the crowd start and scream, but really, they would have anyway. Most of the more reasonable ones were considering it, although with grimaces that said they didn't like being indebted to Harry for anything, not even for leaving them alone. Weasley frowned.

"Why?" the reporter whispered. "What do you have on him?"

Draco spread his hands. "Not _on _him. Just the realization that he's powerful and we need to learn to live with him, because challenging his power is suicidal. That's a realization the Ministry has never yet come to."

"We have to protect our ideals and ways of life," said a woman with blond hair who Draco thought was probably a scion of a family who donated to Hogwarts, although he couldn't remember which one. "He's threatening to destroy them."

"Which ideal?" Draco asked, curious. "Which way of life? He certainly protected our traditions by keeping Hogwarts open, and the Ministry was proposing to shut it down. Did you know they didn't have any _date _for when it would be open again? They just said it would happen some time in the future." He shook his head sadly. "That's sacrificing tradition for novelty, right there."

The blond woman frowned some more. Weasley, of all people, was the one who spoke up. "I think she means the ideal of not living under a Dark Lord. That's one that I'd find worth preserving."

Draco thought he kept his face neutral enough for most people not to notice his impulse to glare at Weasley, but Weasley himself grinned. _What is he playing at? _Draco wondered.

Then he remembered that Harry had described Weasley as a great chess player, and wanted to groan. It was political chess, wasn't it? It was this stupid impulse to put out a statement and see how Draco would respond to it.

If he hadn't known Weasley was loyal to Harry, down to the bone, Draco might also have thought it was an attempt to trip Draco up and make him look stupid. But Weasley wouldn't do that. He must think he was helping. In his way.

"No one has to live under him," said Draco. "I will always maintain the independence of the rest of the wizarding world and the Ministry from him. If he tried to take over the office of the Minister or insisted on being compensated for the Unspeakables' attacking him more than he has been, I would deny him. But I don't think he wants that. I think he wants to be left alone, and for the people who have sworn to him to be left alone."

He gave Weasley a glance this time that he hoped would inform Weasley that _he _was taking advantage of that protection, standing there in Diagon Alley without being attacked. Weasley's grin only widened.

"So you're talking about coexistence," said the reporter who had accosted him before.

Draco focused back on her. "That would be a good word for it."

"What if we don't want to coexist with a Dark Lord?" The reporter stood up tall and straight, looking around for an army of followers that still seemed pretty nonexistent as far as Draco was concerned. "That was an ideal that people during the last war fought and died for!"

"And they fought to disprove blood purity, and to keep a Dark Lord from taking over the wizarding world," Draco pointed out. He could feel his blood singing softly through his veins. This was the kind of political debate he _liked, _with someone who would lay their points out simply and thoroughly and let Draco demolish them in the same way. "This Dark Lord doesn't want to take over our world. We can let him have Hogwarts and the people who want to live there."

"What about the children who want to attend the school but don't want to follow his lead?" The reporter struck a martyred pose. "Don't they deserve an education, too?"

Draco shrugged. "As far as I know, Dark Lord Potter considers the students under his protection, but he doesn't demand that they believe the same things as he does. He only demands that they refrain from attacking magical creatures and other members of his Court, the way he does of adult wizards in the world outside Hogwarts."

"But what if they _want _to attack magical creatures?"

"Then, yes, I would assume Lord Potter would say they should find an education elsewhere."

"But for some wizards, those are among our cherished ideals!"

Draco was about to answer when he felt the pebble in his pocket growing steadily warmer, a sudden blazing star against his leg. He started to put a hand down towards it, wondering. Had Harry also enchanted it so that it would warn Draco when he was going too far in his claims? Draco couldn't speak for Harry, after all, and perhaps the pebble was warning him against trying.

But instead, a shield appeared around him, composed of softly glowing flames. The same thing happened with Rosenthal, and Weasley, and a number of other people in the crowd who Draco knew had sworn to Harry.

Then Harry stepped out of nowhere to Draco's side, his face utterly impersonal and his robes glittering with finery that Draco had never seen, including emeralds in the cuffs at his wrists.

"If you want to say that killing magical creatures is within your cherished traditions," said Harry, his voice distant and empty, "then you may. If you _do _it in my Court or against any of the creatures that have allied with me, then you will burn the way Darkest Signs did." He gave them a wide smile. "Want a look?"

More fire curled away from him, although Draco stood close enough to realize that it was an illusion; there wasn't even any heat. But it was impressive in the way it rose up like waves, and the gold and blue colors at its heart, and it made people back away from him, crying out.

Harry nodded as though he had fulfilled some contract with himself, eyes glinting. "Have a nice day."

Then Harry vanished, and the shields of fire vanished, and Draco straightened up and his collar around his throat, clearing it gently.

"So. The Dark Lord doesn't care what you talk about or even what you believe as long as you don't attack his people. I believe that was what I was saying. And I find it a reasonable demand, and I think that I will be able to compel the Ministry to see it as a reasonable price for coexisting with the Dark Lord of Hogwarts. Does anyone have any more questions?"

There was a long pause. Then someone asked, "Is it true that you would restructure the Department of Mysteries to be less secretive? Someone was saying that you w-would, but I couldn't figure out the purpose of it."

Draco smiled, and answered. He wondered if that person was one of Rosenthal's plants in the crowd; not even Draco knew who all of them were. At any rate, it reminded people that there were more issues in this election than who the Dark Lord of Hogwarts favored, or whether one could coexist with him.

Draco saw the speculative glances thrown at him. Most people had noticed the shield of fire. On the other hand, it had appeared on so many people there that one couldn't say that Draco had been singled out as Harry's only possible ally.

And Draco saw, too, the secretive smile on the face of a hunched-over man with brown beard and eyes near the edge of the crowd.

_You chose to time your intervention, _he thought, but he couldn't muster any resentment at the thought. If that was Harry displaying his political instincts, newly-acquired or otherwise, it was about time.


	8. One Snarky Dark Lord

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—One Snarky Dark Lord_

"Did it go well?"

Hermione's voice came from the office doorway, and Harry took his time looking up at her. He saw the way she tensed when he did, and snorted. "Draco is fine. Ron is fine. Everyone there is fine. I just appeared and made a dramatic statement when someone tried to say that killing magical creatures is a cherished wizarding tradition and I was being mean and unfair to act against that."

Hermione's mouth fell open a little. "What did you say to them?"

"They can say and believe whatever they like, but if they try to act against any of the magical creatures who are sheltering in my Court, then I'll burn them."

Harry took his time putting his feet up on his desk after that. He wasn't sure that he wanted to encounter Hermione's disapproval on the matter. It had seemed so simple when he was in the crowd listening to Draco's speech, and then heard that woman speak about a nonsensical tradition of killing magical creatures, and a fire of his own had filled his head.

But he wasn't sure Hermione would take a naked threat, even if covered with a little humor, the same way.

"Good."

Harry sneaked a cautious peek at Hermione. She was standing in front of him with a vial full of what looked like ground-up jade—_or a green potion, it could be that, too, Harry_—instead of the usual papers. She had a vicious smile.

"People need to understand what's going to happen if they interfere with beings who never hurt them," said Hermione. "What Killian did to that foal was _inhuman, _not all the things they complain about." She extended the vial. "Nott invented this, or brought it with her. She says she invented it a while ago. What do you think about using it as a defense on the wards?"

Harry lifted the potion, feeling a little stunned. _I suppose all that's needed to overcome some of Hermione's moral scruples is an attack on non-humans. _"Maybe I would say that it's a good defense if I knew what it does."

Hermione shook her head. "Oh, right. I forgot that I hadn't told you. I was just picturing what some of their faces might have looked like."

"I can give you a Pensieve memory."

"Do. Later." Hermione tapped the vial with a finger. "This is a poison that only remains in liquid form while it's in a bottle, Nott said." Harry opened his mouth to ask how that would be possible when she would be working with an open cauldron during the brewing process, but Hermione only shrugged. "The woman's a Potions genius, ask her. But when the vial is broken, which you could spell to happen when someone you didn't want to cross the wards crossed them, it turns into a gas."

"What does it do then?" Harry wondered for a second if Snape had ever taught Hortensia, and if he would have liked the way that she'd decided to use her poisons in Harry's service.

"It blinds everyone there, and starts making them vomit." Hermione looked pensive for a second. "I told her that it sounded like what Muggle nerve gas does, and Nott says that she studied Muggle nerve gas when she was researching how to create the poison."

Harry snorted, understanding Hermione's expression perfectly. She might approve of more wizards and witches getting involved with Muggle culture, but she could have wished for a different way that they applied the knowledge. "It isn't fatal?"

"No. The worst it can do is make them sick for a while. Well, Nott did say that it would be fatal if they breathed it for more than twenty minutes, but she doesn't think that anyone would do that on _purpose_."

Harry nodded. "And I can watch the wards, and if someone falls down and starts breathing it without knowing what they're doing, then I can kick them beyond the wards and out of danger."

"I don't think they would try to cross them twice. At least, not at that place," said Hermione, and in her voice was exhaustion, like his, with the stupid way that the Ministry was acting most of the time.

Harry nodded and touched the vial. "Does she need this back?"

"No. She's making more, and she said that she could come up with as much as you need."

"Good. Then I'll come up with a way that I can link it to the wards, and everyone should be satisfied. Well, except the people who try to cross it. But watching them wheeze and vomit might be amusing."

"Amusing, in a way," said Hermione, and gave him another smile before she left the office.

Harry smiled and leaned back to study the vial. He felt his heart hammering in something that might be either fear or excitement, or perhaps just passion. He and Hermione were more on the same page now, he thought. They would take non-fatal measures when they could, but the people who attacked them now wouldn't receive the same compassion they would offer to people who left them alone.

_Or even tried to help them._

Harry's mind turned to Draco, and he wondered idly what he was doing, but he decided against either sending him an owl or starting a firecall. Draco was probably still at his speech, and if he wasn't, then Harry would get to see and speak to him soon enough.

* * *

"Tell me you didn't know that Lord Potter would appear today."

Draco rolled his eyes and gently shrugged on a new robe, one that wasn't as finely-made as the one he had worn at the speech. "The way I've already told you six times, and you haven't believed me once?"

Rosenthal was silent. Draco turned back and found that she was playing her fingers along her wrist, as though remembering the yellow light Harry had encircled her hands with when she swore to him. It was a precaution against her writing any truths that would betray him.

"It bothers me that he was suddenly there," Rosenthal whispered. "It bothers me that he's keeping such a short leash on you and such a great scrutiny on everything his opponents say that he could suddenly appear like that."

"I know," said Draco. "But I think he was only at the speech because he knew I was speaking. He wouldn't have bothered to show up if I wasn't there, and then that assertion would have to pass unchallenged."

Rosenthal's eyes focused on him. "He burned that apothecary, too. I think that he might be going insane, becoming a Dark Lord in the way that You-Know-Who was."

"He burned the _building_, not the man himself," Draco said patiently. He knew this was a misconception he would have to spend a lot of time correcting, probably. At least Harry had had some witnesses in Diagon Alley, and that meant there were people who would also spread the contrary story. "And if burning his shop and turning him over to the centaurs isn't justified by his slaughter of a centaur foal, I don't know what would justify it."

He expected Rosenthal to respond immediately with a good political argument, the way she usually would, but instead, she got a deep, thoughtful look on her face, and didn't answer. Draco finished changing into his robe, and flipped through his mental schedule. Ah, yes. That little "private tour" of the Ministry, where he would meet some of the people on the council who were willing to work with him.

"I think I can see the way the world he wants to make will work," Rosenthal murmured. "Wizards can't think that they're superior to magical creatures anymore. They can't take action against someone who's announced that he's a Dark Lord. If they send their children to Hogwarts, they at least have to accept that their children can't follow all the beliefs they've taught them at the school. That will change things."

"I'm sure it will for some people," said Draco. "The same way that Harry being willing to work with the Ministry if they leave him alone will for some people."

Rosenthal shook her head, her expression rapt. "I think this goes deeper," she said. "Deeper than you might understand right now. You would probably know it better if you were older and had children. There's this—strain—in some families, both pure-blood and Muggleborn, that they should be able to do whatever they like. They don't respect Muggles, of course. They think they're superior because they have magic. There's still certain things they won't do because it would expose us to Muggles and put us in danger, but they don't fear them."

"Right," Draco murmured, wondering where she was going with this.

"And most people wouldn't match into the Forbidden Forest and attempt to slaughter a centaur, but they're used to the idea that they _could _if they wanted to." Rosenthal lifted glowing eyes. "Now someone is telling them that isn't true, and they'll have to change a lot of the ways they think and do things, if they don't want to suffer the consequences."

"You think that would make an actual difference?" Draco could now see where she was going with this, but he had to admit it made him skeptical. He didn't think it would count all that much if it was a prohibition on something that most people would never do.

"Think about it this way," said Rosenthal. "Do you believe that woman who told you today that killing magical creatures is a tradition of her family has killed a lot of magical creatures in her lifetime?"

"Not unless they were doxies."

Rosenthal smiled. "Right. And she probably doesn't care that much about magical creatures one way or the other. She's used to disregarding them and not caring about them. She was only trying to make a political point. But consider what it means to her to be told, directly, to her face, that attempts to slaughter magical creatures will result in death for her."

"It sounds like a risky long-term strategy," Draco had to concede, his heart sinking a little. "Is that what you're trying to say? That you don't think Harry can keep this up for long?"

"The opposite," said Rosenthal, that real smile still on her face. "Because if most of the public is arrogant and convinced they should be able to slaughter magical creatures if they want to, they're also afraid of Lord Potter and the way the newspapers and Ministry have portrayed him. Now they've come face-to-face with that power. They'll have to change the way they act."

Draco rubbed his forehead. "Maybe I'm being unusually stupid today, but that's what you said before, and I still don't see how this becomes some important political revolution."

"They'll change their minds," said Rosenthal softly. "They couldn't get through those shields Lord Potter put up today, even if they think they _should _have been able to. They can't talk their way around his power, or offer him anything that would convince him to change his mind. They have to deal with him if they want Potions ingredients from the Forbidden Forest, or if they want to send their children to Hogwarts. There's a new political power on the scene, one that isn't the Ministry, and that can't be bribed or tricked."

Draco nodded. "All right. I see it more clearly, now, but I think you might still be overestimating the impact of Harry's little drama today."

Rosenthal snorted, something else she almost never did. "I think it see more clearly than you do even now. We live with constraints. The Statute of Secrecy, the limited number of magical people and pure-blood families, the unavailability of some ingredients and spells that would make our lives easier because they're expensive or Dark Arts or just don't exist. This is another constraint we'll adapt to. And just like some wizards started to consider Muggles worthy of respect when they had no choice but to live with them, I think some wizards will start to think better of magical creatures."

Draco caught on this time. "They'll do it because the alternative is admitting that they're scared."

Rosenthal smiled. "Right. I'm not saying that everyone is going to make the change. But eventually? Yes, I think we'll see a more relaxed attitude towards other beings, and it'll be easier for you to make some legislative changes. It'll take time. It'll take campaigning and laws and probably bribes on your part, and Lord Potter accepting some more people into his Court and showing that the standard of living really isn't lower there. But it will come."

"You really should be the one running for Minister, not me."

Rosenthal waved a hand. "I would lose my patience too easily with people who looked to me for direct orders, rather than being able to manipulate them from behind the scenes."

That made Draco wonder exactly how much she enjoyed manipulating _him_, but he didn't get a chance to ask before Rosenthal leaned forwards briskly. "So. I suggest that you start thinking about that meeting at the Ministry. How many people are you going to see?"

* * *

"Lord Potter. We have a report."

Harry had come awake with difficulty, to the point that Hermione practically had to shake his shoulder blade apart and shout in his ear before he sat up, and now he wanted to rub his eyes and tell Niamh to tell him later. But she had come through a lot to enter the castle at midnight, and he nodded and sat up. "All right. What did Killian tell you?"

"That he had one of those artifacts like the one I gave you." Niamh looked at the drawer in Harry's desk that still held the piece of golden crystal, and he wondered if she could sense it. "He claimed not to know who gave it to him at first, but then he broke down and admitted it was an Unspeakable. He still did not know the woman's name."

"That doesn't matter," Harry muttered, grimly. So there was his proof that these artifacts were originating in the Department of Mysteries, and he doubted that he would get any more specific answer. "Did he say how they could be stopped?"

"No." Niamh stamped one hoof down. "I doubt that he knows himself. He did say something about our enemies' future plans, however."

"Did he?" Harry promptly sat up. This was interesting to him, and possibly relevant. "How could he know that, if he was just a dupe of the Unspeakables?"

"They mentioned something in their conversations in front of him, when he questioned whether he would be safe using the crystal. They wanted to reassure him that they were giving the crystals to many people, I believe, although Killian did not want to phrase it that way." Niamh gave a satisfied little twitch of her flanks, and Harry had no trouble believing that Killian would have trouble phrasing _anything _that way right now, or any other way. "They said that they would soon have crystals that could travel through water."

Harry turned and stared out his office window towards the lake, which he could sense but not see with the darkness that had closed around Hogwarts. "The merfolk," he whispered. He had made a bargain with them, too, although it didn't seem to be as widely known to the public as his bargain with the centaurs was.

"That is what I thought," said Niamh, though in the infuriating way of centaurs, she didn't sound as if she had much concern about the merfolk. "Do you wish to question him yourself? He is still sane enough for that."

Harry shuddered a little, though it was more because he was imagining what he might do to Killian than because of what he thought the centaurs had done. "No. I don't think it would be a good idea for me to see him. Do go on asking him questions, though. And if you feel like delivering him to me when you're done…"

"If he is still alive," said Niamh, and bowed her head, and left.

Harry's hands closed down slowly on the windowsill when she was gone. He knew that his breathing was spinning out of control, and there was an ache in the center of his soul where Persephone had been and was no more. She would have landed on his shoulder and rested her beak against him if she was in her sweet, sick mood; she would have screamed at him and distracted him from brooding if she wasn't.

The attack planned on the lake might never come now. The Unspeakables had to be aware of what had happened to Killian. They might think he would tell Harry of their plans, and change them accordingly.

But what happened if they had given crystals that could bypass his wards to other people? And what happened if _those _people believed some new rumor about the scales or skin or eyes of merpeople being beneficial to potions?

This was a multi-pronged attack that would never be countered by the kind of fear that Harry was hoping to raise in people who proclaimed that it was part of their traditions to kill magical creatures. This was the kind of danger that would be ended only when he had managed to figure out how the artifacts worked, and counter them.

_Hopefully with some kind of poison that Hortensia's invented._

Harry walked grimly back to his desk and opened the drawer that held the golden crystal prisoner. He had some research to do.


	9. An Interesting Experiment

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_Chapter Nine—An Interesting Experiment_

Harry flipped the pouch on his belt that held the golden crystalline object. He had found that containing it in a pouch of soft moleskin like the one that had supposedly been found on the first wizard intruding into the centaur part of the Forbidden Forest would stop its beams from reaching for his magic.

He stood outside next to the lake, ignoring the way that the waters lapped softly on the shore at his feet. He had set up several wards around him, working with the will of Hogwarts to protect the grounds. He wanted no one, human or otherwise, to stumble into him as he worked on the crystal.

He picked up the pouch and held it in front of him for a second. He needed to have it out to work with, but he was reluctant to expose the magic of Hogwarts to a possible draining effect.

Well, he'd done impossible things before, hadn't he, like conjured Persephone out of nothing and then broken her magic down and driven it back into Hogwarts? Harry bared his teeth and raised his left hand.

The magic he called to this time came from deep down in the earth, deeper than the bond he had with Hogwarts, deeper than anything he had called on before. He reached down to it, and it stirred and rose for him, yawning with an enormous sound on the way. Harry closed his eyes.

His hope was that magic that came from the heart of the earth itself was going to be more resistant to the golden crystal than wizarding magic—which all the magic of Hogwarts was, even if it came from the Founders and not Harry.

The ground in front of him stirred. Harry moved his hand to the side so that the rising power wouldn't disrupt the lake too much. _That _would be a good beginning to his alliance with the merfolk.

The dirt heaved and mounded up. Harry blinked into the face of what looked like a swaying worm, or a dragon. Even as he looked at it, it formed itself, maybe in response to the images in his mind, so that it had long, curling horns and a blunt brown snout like a muzzle, with impressions along the sides of the muzzle like teeth. It had dark hollows in the sides of the face for eyes.

Harry swallowed and opened the pouch.

The golden crystal vibrated in his hand as he held it out. Harry stared down at it, and saw the same thing he had seen once before, the reaching rays from the sides of the strange shape. They aimed at his magic, and the wards he had set up, and the edges of the Hogwarts grounds where his power secured the protection of his Court, and the lake where the magic of the merfolk lingered.

But they didn't reach towards the rearing earth-worm in front of Harry.

Harry grinned savagely, and closed his hands around the crystal. It was an uncomfortable sensation, as the spikes cut into him and sucked at his skin, drawing off the power from his core. But that also brought him into intimate contact with it, and made it a lot easier to realize what it was doing.

_It's a fucking ritual._

It was. Harry could see the streaks of lightning darting across the surface of the crystal, something he would never have noticed if he were simply trying to watch it from a distance, or in the moments before slamming his desk drawer shut. The lightning formed runes, and surrounded the body and "limbs" of the crystal at a distance from the center. Harry couldn't see the whole crystal at once, but he knew that the runes would probably form a circle.

Every time a wizard used the crystal, they basically enacted a ritual that took place entirely inside the thing. Or maybe the open air gave the ritual circle embedded in the crystal its power. Either way, it was no wonder that these things were so powerful. Ritual magic, as Harry had reason to know, could do things that most ordinary spells never could.

Harry started as he felt his hands grow cold, and realized that he could no longer feel the crystal he was touching. It was slick with his blood, and the color was changing from gold to pink and flushed.

Harry threw the golden crystal straight at the earth-worm, which had continued to watch him with those hollow black eyes, unmoving.

The worm's maw gaped, and it swallowed the crystal without a blink and without a pause. Then, slowly, it writhed back into the earth, and was gone. It had helped him as much as it was going to. It would take the crystal back into the heart of the rock and stone, and probably crush it there.

Harry gasped and sank to his knees. His heart was laboring. Draining one's magic wasn't pleasant.

He knelt there until he knew that he could stand up and walk to the edge of the lake without falling over. Then he bathed his hands in the water, scrubbing until even the feeling of the crystal's slick coolness was gone.

"Lord Potter."

That was a merwoman, her head poking out from the surface. Harry managed to stop himself from jerking and splashing her, but it was a near thing. He hadn't felt her swimming near at all, despite his connection to Hogwarts and the lake. The crystal had depleted his magical core more than he'd thought it had.

"Yes," he said, nodding to her and waiting for the weakness in his knees to pass.

"Why did you call up such a potent force so near the lake?" He hadn't met this particular merwoman before, and he wondered why, when she was obviously proficient with English in a way not many of them were. She folded her arms and stared at him. "That is not the act of an ally."

"I'm sorry," Harry said, and at least his voice was calm and confident. Either from the lake or from the lack of constant pulling on his core, he felt a little stronger. "I was dealing with a weapon that some of my enemies had invented to sneak through my wards. They had done it at least twice without me knowing. I needed the earth-magic to contain it, and my own magic to see how the object worked. I forgot that you would be able to feel the earth shifting around below the water."

The merwoman studied him some more. Harry endured the scrutiny, wondering what he would do if she didn't believe him and summoned some other merfolk to combat him. He didn't think he could resist too many in this state, and he didn't want to hurt them, anyway.

The merwoman finally snorted and flipped her tail at him. "You should be more careful," she said in that resonant voice, drifting away from shore and more towards the middle of the lake. "Next time, we might not accept that apology."

"I know," Harry tried his best to look repentant. He must have looked enough like that for her to believe him, because she dived.

Harry waited, shivering, beside the lake, but she didn't surface again. And he had enough strength now to step back and ask Hogwarts to take him to the castle. It made the castle hesitate a few seconds, to decide what to do in the absence of further instructions, but then it formed a long roll of earth beneath his feet that looked sort of like a train, and bore him off through the night towards the entrance.

Harry sighed and let his body relax into the dirt. He knew the train would take him through the walls of Hogwarts, too, and up to his office, and he would spend as much time as he needed to relaxing and recovering in its safety.

He knew how to combat the crystals now, and keep all the people—magical creatures included—safe within his Court. That was worth the risk he had taken confronting the ritual hidden inside the golden crystal.

* * *

"Thank you for coming."

Lucy Lenneal had taken charge of Draco the moment he arrived at the Ministry, and she was gliding ahead of him now, taking him through corridors he had never seen before. Draco wasn't entirely surprised to discover that there were departments within departments here, parts of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement that the Aurors didn't know about, others secret from the Hit Wizards, and ones that the Minister didn't know existed. He was just glad that he had taken the precaution of making friends with some of the people who _did _know those secrets, so he wouldn't be taken by surprise when he became Minister.

That didn't mean Lenneal would show him all the secrets she held, any more than the others would. But at least he would know that this underlayer of conspiracy existed, and that might teach him more about where to look. Someone who did know that secret passages existed in Hogwarts would have more advantages than someone who didn't, even if they didn't know them all individually.

Lenneal halted in front of a door made of a wood that Draco identified, after a moment of struggle, as white oak. There was a symbol in the middle of it that looked like an upside-down silver M. Lenneal knocked three times, each time on a different part of the M.

There was a pause that felt lengthy and embarrassed to Draco, and then the door dissolved like mist. Draco raised his eyebrows. He knew that particular ward, but it was complex and difficult.

"I trust that I'll be impressed with the caliber of your companions, if one of them made that ward," he murmured, and followed Lenneal inside.

Lenneal's sudden silence made Draco sure that the companion was in this room. He drew his cloak off and nodded to everyone in sight, faintly smiling.

There were numerous men and women in this room, more than he had expected. It seemed that the Ministry's move to consolidate power in a council had alienated some people who had been willing to put up with Minister Tillipop. And there was a tall, strong man standing at the head of the circular table in the room who made Draco pause in the middle of the remark he was about to make.

"Really," he said. "I didn't expect to see you here, Mr. Diggory."

"Call me Amos." Diggory looked Draco directly in the eye, the way that his son Cedric once had. "And I know. But there are things we have to talk about, and I want someone sensible to discuss them with."

After considering that for a second, Draco nodded and handed his cloak over to the diaphanous, ghost-like presence that had obviously replaced a house-elf. It was true that it wouldn't be wise to have house-elves present in this meeting. They might blurt out something that someone didn't want, and most house-elves in the Ministry had multiple owners and thus multiple loyalties.

"So." Diggory looked around the room and collected the others with his eyes. Some of those present drifted slowly in the direction of the table, though, Draco noted. The alliance was uneasy, like most coalitions made between pure-bloods and others in the Ministry. "You will become the Minister we want?"

"That depends on your desires," said Draco, and took the wide oaken chair that Lenneal had indicated for him.

"A political answer." Diggory—or Amos, as Draco supposed he should call him even in his head so that he didn't get tripped up—stared at him intensely. "But what we want at the moment is a strong Minister. That's what everyone wants. That's what everyone needs."

Draco allowed one eyebrow to lift. "I thought some people enjoyed not having a strong Minister. It certainly allowed you to get away with things during Tillipop's reign more easily."

"When you speak of _getting away_," Amos began.

Draco forced himself to dip his head in response. "Forgive me, that was badly-phrased. What I meant was that you had achieved your goals more easily with a Minister like Tillipop, I thought." There. He didn't think even Rosenthal could have asked him to be more diplomatic. "Why would you want one who would pry into your affairs?"

Glances flew around the table. Draco waited, and Amos finally seemed to realize that everyone had been silently electing him spokesperson. He sighed and faced Draco again. "The Ministry is faltering for lack of a strong Minister. No one ordinary trusts us anymore. The goblins send us requests to see the Minister on a daily basis, and when we tell them that we have a council now, they say that they've always dealt with the Minister and consider it essential that we have one. Foreign wizards don't really want to deal with the council, either. Basically, Mr. Malfoy, the wizarding world is resistant to change, and we didn't know how resistant when we thought we could change things."

"Well, that can't be completely true," Draco said, frowning a little, and inwardly enjoying himself hugely. "I'm a change from Minister Tillipop, even a change in that no Malfoy has ever been Minister, and yet you assume people will vote for me."

Amos leaned forwards. "You'll allow us the illusion of continuity while we make the changes that we need to in the background."

Draco smiled slowly. "Now, I think, we have a bargain that we can understand. As long as you realize that I want the power I can claim to be more than illusory."

"All we require is that you put up a good front, and deal with people like the goblins and the ambassadors who care dearly about our having a Minister, and you can do whatever you want other than that."

Some of the people at the table frowned, and Draco set his fingers together. "Whether or not they wanted you to speak for them, Amos, it's clear that not everyone here agrees it's that simple."

"Then we need to hammer out something more complicated," said Amos, and gestured insistently. "I'm ready to do that right now."

"If you are," Draco said, and sat up more firmly, "then of course I am."

* * *

It was nearly eleven the next morning before Harry's fireplace flared and Draco tumbled through it. He looked as though he was sleepwalking, an impression that his rapidly blinking eyes and deep circles under them didn't help.

"What's wrong?" Harry was across the room to catch him before he could fall, wrapping his arms firmly around Draco's waist and assisting him into the chair behind the desk. He considered a second, then snapped his fingers. Hogwarts began to bring a more cushioned chair up from a lower classroom that no one used anymore. Harry would normally have tried to conjure or Transfigure one, but his magic was still a little shaky.

"I was negotiating most of the night, that's all." Draco's mouth opened in a gigantic yawn, and he peered at Harry over his own lips. "You think you're the only one who can assemble a circle of diverse allies? Well, you _aren't_."

Harry snorted in both amusement and relief, and settled on the desk next to Draco. "These are allies in the Ministry?"

Draco nodded and tried to respond, but another yawn interrupted him. By that time, the chair had arrived. Harry helped him into it, and Draco leaned his head back against the cushions with a luxurious sigh. "Most of the senior Aurors, and some other people who work in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Other Departments, too, and the important undersecretaries in them, and some people who fulfill the role that my father used to and donate large political sums." He paused delicately. "I even got someone I think was an Unspeakable, though I can't promise the whole Department of Mysteries will follow her decrees."

"That's wonderful, Draco." Harry moved behind him so that he could massage his shoulders. "You didn't have to come over here right away, though. You know that? You could have slept in, enough not to stumble as you came through the fireplace."

Draco snorted like he was going to snore, but no such luck. "I did not stumble."

"You didn't see yourself from the outside. I'm happy for what you accomplished, but you look like shit."

Draco lifted his head and turned it to glare. Harry expected him to talk some more about how he didn't look like shit and he was utterly fine and Harry was the one who liked to worry without it meaning anything.

But what he said was, "Speaking of. I just noticed that your aura is less strong than it usually is. What have _you _been doing to yourself?"

_Shit._


	10. A Series of Excuses

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_Chapter Ten—A Series of Excuses_

"I didn't really do anything that was _too _bad."

Draco fought the drag of his eyelids and his own exhaustion, and sat up, shaking his head. "That means 'please don't be angry at me, Draco.' It doesn't mean that what you were doing _wasn't _actually dangerous."

Harry froze and glared at him. Draco glared back. Yes, he could feel the fatigue in his limbs. That didn't matter. What mattered was making it clear to Harry that he had done something fucking _stupid _and he should be glad that Draco wasn't in the right state of mind or mood to shake it out of him.

Harry finally seemed to relent, and glanced away with a sigh. "I decided to surround that golden crystal with enough barriers to see what really happened when it sucked on my magic. I found out that it was a ritual. There are little runes of light embedded in the crystal that form a circle. And you know that ritual circles are always more powerful than ordinary spells. I'm not surprised that nothing we tried contained it, now."

"What kind of barriers did you raise?" Draco made sure that his voice was quiet, even, gentle. He could yell at Harry later. There might be more information to know, and Harry would get sulky and retreat with too much yelling.

Harry brightened. "Wards around me, and then power based on the bond that I have with Hogwarts. Hogwarts was what took care of me after the crystal mostly drained my core," he added, as if he thought that would reassure Draco. "It carried me back to the castle and made sure that I slept."

Draco breathed through his nose. It would keep him from exploding. "Your _core _was drained? What prevented you from draining it completely?"

"I called up magic from the heart of the earth under Hogwarts," said Harry simply. "That's older than wizarding magic, you know. It blocked the crystal and proved to me that there's at least one of kind of power that the ritual can't affect. I'm not surprised. The Unspeakables who probably invented this were always more interested in artifacts than natural sources of magic."

"You still did an unspeakably dangerous thing," Draco whispered.

"Is that a pun?"

Draco bit his lips, savagely, so he wouldn't yell. He didn't think he would really get anywhere with Harry if he yelled. "Okay," he said. "So you did something where you didn't know all the consequences, and you're trying to tell me it was okay because—what? You had something to walk you back to your office afterwards?" Picturing Harry doing that while Draco was in a meeting with potential allies that was only _politically _dangerous made him sick. Like he should have been there.

_He's still an adult, and a Dark Lord. I can't know what kind of shit he's going to pull all the time, and it's not my place to police it._

Harry looked shiftily away from him, then sighed and nodded when Draco kept staring at him. "And because the earth-magic manifested in the form of a dragon, and swallowed the crystal when I thought I'd learned as much as I could from it. So there's a sign that it can stop and contain and crush the crystals, too. We finally have a weapon we can use against them." He looked at Draco with a widening of his eyes that Draco recognized, with a faint shock, as pleading. "Isn't it worth it, if I learn enough to defeat the crystal?"

"Nothing is worth the loss of you," said Draco, which was so simple and so straightforward he didn't know why Harry hadn't reasoned it out for himself.

"I wasn't going to die. That power that makes me into a responsible Dark Lord also makes me someone who can—"

"Who can take risks, sure, and survive things that other people couldn't," said Draco, and he thought some of the building fury leaked through this time, because Harry looked startled. "It doesn't mean that it's _fun _for you to get hurt, or for people to watch you get hurt!"

Harry held still, and then reached out and smoothed one hand down the side of Draco's face and onto his shoulder. Draco eyed him narrowly. He thought that Harry's aura might have strengthened in the last few minutes, although it was hard to be sure.

"Hey," Harry said softly. "You brought up a point I hadn't considered. I thought—well, I knew I wouldn't die or get permanently harmed, and I thought it was worth it to find out what was going on with the crystal. But next time, I might consider other methods of addressing the problem, at least." He reached out, smiling, and punched Draco in the shoulder. "Thanks for making me consider that."

Draco studied him again. Yes, the aura had come back, muted but stronger than it had been when he'd stepped into the room. Perhaps that meant that Harry talking about his magical core being drained was a _bit _of an exaggeration.

"How can you summon up the earth-power to destroy all the crystals that might come close to the wards, though?" he asked, deciding that he would take this as the peace offering it probably was. "I thought the earth-power would do what it wanted to do, and you couldn't really control it."

"That's a good point," Harry said in a solemn way that made Draco sure he already had an answer and had thought of this. "I'm not going to rely on the earth-power. I only wanted to be sure that there _was _something that could resist the crystal, that it wasn't all-powerful, and Hogwarts wouldn't be damaged if the crystal I had got out of control." He hopped up on the edge of the desk, making Draco miss the warmth of his stroking hand right away. "But in the meantime, I'm going to work out ways to disrupt the ritual in the crystal, instead of working out how to block it altogether. If I make it so that that ritual couldn't take place on Hogwarts grounds…"

"You'll have to tell me about how you're going to do that," Draco murmured. Harry stopped, his head cocked to the side like a rabbit listening for the dive of a hawk. "Later. After you make up for frightening me."

Harry turned around, hands planted on his desk. "And what way can I make up for that? Or are there multiple ways?"

"Multiple ways." Draco stretched languidly in his chair, glad now that the cushioned back would prop his head up and show off the length of his neck. Sure enough, Harry's stare locked onto it, and it was a _hungry _stare. Draco hid his smile by looking at Harry in turn. "You could use your mouth on me, for instance. Or your hands. Or your body. Or your cock."

"I like the sound of that last one," Harry whispered, and came towards him.

* * *

Making love to Draco was a little different when Harry didn't have the magic to simply conjure a bed, but on the other hand, he still had his bond with Hogwarts.

As he rolled a laughing Draco to the floor, the stones softened under them, and became the sort of mattress that could make them both bounce almost off it. Harry knelt down and waved a hand over Draco's clothes, and small hands came swarming out of the mattress and plucked them off.

Draco's eyes widened, and he looked up at Harry as if he had never seen him before. "Even with your aura weakened, you can still do so much," he whispered.

Harry realized he had been tense, and relaxed a little. He had thought the hands might hurt Draco or frighten him. But it wasn't the case, and Draco was already reaching up and entwining impatient arms around Harry's neck, pulling him down so that they lay groin-to-groin, chest-to-chest, body-to-body.

Harry groaned and took off his own clothes by making the little hands rise up and pull at him. The way he temporarily lost sight of Draco as his shirt was dragged over his head was the most agonizing thing he'd experienced in days. He promptly lowered his head and sucked at the side of Draco's neck.

Draco reached up and held him there. What little Harry could see of his face from the corner of his eye looked like he had his mouth parted in idiotic bliss.

Harry lapped one more time at the skin of Draco's neck, which was slick and salty and warmer than he had thought skin could be, and then sat up and reached for the lube that was in a drawer of the desk. It made Draco snort and then shiver to be exposed to the cold air, but Harry couldn't help that. He carefully coated himself with the gleaming, sticky liquid, and then reached down and slid his fingers into Draco's arse.

Draco opened his legs. "I just want you in me," he whispered. "Go ahead and skip the foreplay."

Harry still teased Draco with a few sharp motions of his fingers, because _he _liked the foreplay, but he put aside both lube and teasing when he saw the panting, serious expression on Draco's face. He slid slowly inside, and grunted and groaned like a mad thing when the heat he had forgotten enwrapped him. He always forgot it. There was no remembering an experience like this, not perfectly.

Draco reached up and kissed him fiercely, then wrapped his legs around Harry's waist. Harry began to rock, his eyes on Draco's all the while. Draco had the same silly expression of bliss, and he was groaning a little, rolling his hips as though that could make Harry go faster.

Well, what Draco wanted, Draco should have, Harry considered. So he went faster, and the little hum in Draco's throat began to break out in shouted growls of his own.

Harry adjusted the pace of his thrusts when he realized that he would probably come before Draco did. He didn't want that. He wanted to linger, to watch Draco's expression and the way his hands groped around at the edges of the mattress as though he didn't really know what to do with them, to listen to the silly squeaking noises that their bodies made together.

Draco caught his breath with what sounded like an enormous gasp, and turned his head to demand, "Who said that you could go slower?"

Harry grinned and bent down, kissing Draco hard enough this time to make their lips hurt, and quickened his thrusts again. Maybe there could be too much of a good thing.

Or maybe it would be just as much fun to watch Draco fall apart as it was to take him there.

Draco groaned his way through his orgasm, all right, neck arched and shaking, legs spread as though he was trying to get even more of Harry's cock inside his body. When he fell limp, it was to lie there and tremble, head turned to the side and tongue dangling out.

"I love you," Harry breathed, because he did, he loved Draco more at the moment than he ever had.

Draco squeezed down in response. Harry got the point, and came with a sharp hiss that Draco was welcome to think was Parseltongue if he wanted. He excited Harry enough that he was wordless except for hisses anyway. Harry crashed down on top of Draco and did some more panting, and heard more smug humming from Draco in return.

"I want to know that you're not going to do that with anyone else," Draco whispered against his throat. "I know that you want me and you're faithful, but what if something happens to split us apart? Some serious political conflict?"

Harry blinked slowly, recalling his thoughts from the mists of physical pleasure to reality. "You want me to swear that I'm not going to do that with anyone else?"

"_Yes_." And Draco's arms and legs grew even heavier, as if he would just hold Harry here on the mattress with him until he agreed.

Harry reached up and stroked the side of Draco's neck, where his mark still was. "Even if that would mean I'd have to stay celibate? You realize that that's a bit of an unreasonable request, don't you?"

"Yes. And yes."

Draco's eyes were clear, not still hazed in the way that would have made Harry certain Draco didn't really know what he was asking. And he went on looking until Harry dipped his head in a slow nod.

"I can't promise that I'll always be in love with you," Harry whispered. "Although right now it feels like I will." Draco still waited, and Harry knew it wasn't good enough. "But I can promise that I would never do anything like this with someone else. There's no one else it could ever _be _like this with."

Draco spent some time considering that. Harry wanted to ask why he had desired that promise from Harry in the first place, or if he would make a promise like it, but this didn't seem to be the time.

"Fine," said Draco at last. "That's good to know. Because there are lots of people who would want to be with the Dark Lord of Hogwarts, you realize?"

Harry snorted. "You have too much on your mind if you really think that. There are plenty of people who would be too frightened of me to ever consider being with me, no matter how many personal advantages it gives them."

"Not if they knew what kind of lover and person you really were." Harry opened his mouth to answer back, but Draco went on, speaking insistently over him. "No, I mean it. I don't want someone else to steal into your heart and find my place there. Not ever."

And that, Harry reckoned, was what really mattered to Draco, more than Harry making love to someone else or using Hogwarts and his magic to do it. He bent down until his mouth was next to Draco's ear.

"I promise," he whispered. "There's no one else who will ever hold the place in my heart that you do, and I won't go looking for someone who will. It's you or no one. You're the only one who gets to see this side of me."

Draco studied his face until some tipping point that Harry didn't understand was reached, and then he kissed Harry soundly. Harry went with the kiss, liking it, whether or not he always understood Draco's impulses.

But hey, Draco had come near to losing Harry, as he saw it, when Harry confronted that golden crystal. Maybe it was only logical for him to want a promise that would keep a _part _of Harry safe.

* * *

Draco lay still with his eyes closed until he heard Harry's breathing smooth and slow. Then he rolled over and looked at him. Harry was ordinary in sleep, at least, if he wasn't ordinary any other time, his head hanging to the side and his mouth open a little as though he was sucking at something invisible.

_I wish it was my cock._

Draco sighed. He was too tired even to stir to hardness at that. He laid his head in the middle of Harry's chest and closed his eyes.

He supposed that it hadn't been the best time to demand that Harry remain forever devoted to him, but the idea had come down and struck him like the sight of the ritual in the golden crystal must have struck Harry, and he hadn't been able to dismiss it. So he had asked, and the words had come out of his mouth, and Harry had promised.

Had made the only promise that mattered, in the end. Draco knew that Harry might have other lovers if they ended their days not together; it might be politically necessary for Draco to pretend that he wasn't interested in Harry even if the truth of their relationship came out. There were already some people who believed that Harry had another lover, in the form of the man Draco had pretended to be under a glamour.

In so many ways, Harry was beyond Draco. More powerful, more invulnerable, not dependent on the good will of people in the Ministry, less inclined to be political, more courageous, with closer friends. Draco wanted at least one hold on him, one thing that would make their relationship closer and show that Harry was at least inclined to lean on Draco in private.

Harry rolled nearer, his mouth parting and a gabble of nonsense words flowing out. Draco rolled his eyes and gathered him in, awkwardly patting the back of Harry's neck when he snorted and snuffled and cuddled closer.

"In the end, it's not really about power," he whispered into Harry's ear. "I know that. It's just hard enough to remember sometimes that I need extra help."

Harry whuffled again and rolled fully on top of him. Draco smiled. It was hard not to feel loved when Harry was doing _that_.

And so he finally let his eyes close and his body relax in the way that he hadn't been able to do before. The flashes of uncertainty or even wishing that he hadn't become close to Harry were only momentary. _This _was the forever.


	11. The Banned Ritual

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven-The Banned Ritual_

Rosenthal pulled at the golden chain that dangled down the front of Draco's chest, under his robes. "You realize that they'll be wild to know what this means? That a lot of the questions you receive will focus on that?"

"You mean that the questions _you_ want to ask focus on that." Draco stepped back from the mirror and studied himself critically. He had to admit that the royal blue robes weren't ones he would have chosen, but they were dramatic, contrasting with the golden chain and making his hair stand out like a pale flame. He had asked Rosenthal for dramatic, after all.

"I can admit the possibility of both being true, which you're unlikely to." Rosenthal circled him slowly. "I would feel better if you told me what you were planning."

Draco raised an eyebrow at her reflection. "I can see that you would. You're not usually this unsubtle."

"You say this is the stroke that could guarantee your election, and you expect me _not_ to be curious?"

Softening, Draco glanced at her. "I think my election is guaranteed already. What I can do is guarantee a certain relationship between the Ministry and Harry."

"And you won't tell me what it is."

"I want you to be as surprised as everyone else." Draco touched the chain one more time, and more specifically the clasp that fastened it to the top of the hidden vial, then turned towards the door. "Let's go."

* * *

Hermione sighed and handed over a pile of books taller than her head. "I'm sorry, Harry. I can't find anything in there about a way to prevent a ritual from being performed on Hogwarts grounds."

Harry glanced at Lucy Lenneal, who hesitated. "I know a way to protect powerful places like Hogwarts from outside interference, but it takes months. I don't think you have that."

"I know a way."

Harry turned to Hortenisa Nott, who had joined them in his office when he invited the various people living in Hogwarts to come to him if they had any idea for banning a ritual from being performed on the entire grounds. Hortensia hadn't said anything so far, and frankly Harry hadn't expected her to. Her expertise in poisons would lead to some good physical defenses, but there was no way for her to extend that to rituals, unless she offered to poison anyone leading a ritual at Hogwarts. And Harry or his Veela or werewolf or merfolk or centaur guests might want to do that sometimes.

"What is it?" Harry asked, when he realized that Hortensia was watching him unblinkingly and apparently awaiting permission to speak. She did make his flesh creep sometimes.

"Anything can be poisoned," said Hortensia. "That was one thing I was taught, and I hold it as an article of faith. That should include ideas, concepts, ghosts, the air itself. It should include rituals."

"You can't poison an abstract concept," Hermione started. Harry recognized one of those debating tones that meant Hermione could sit there and happily argue it for years, and hastily intervened.

"I think she's right, Hortensia," he said. "I mean, I certainly never heard of anyone trying to poison any of those things. Or maybe the air, but they just meant poisoning it so that other people would breathe it in."

"I mean _poisoning _it," said Hortensia peacefully, "so that it would cease to exist. And I spent many years thinking of, and sometimes creating, potions that would do harm to targets other people find strange." Her politely bland face said that she thought _they _were the strange ones, for not pursuing all available lines of research. "I know how to poison a ritual."

"Even one that takes place inside a golden crystal?" Harry demanded. "Wouldn't you have to smear the potion directly on each crystal in that case? And we can't do that because we don't know when they're coming through the wards."

Hortensia folded her hands in her lap. "It presents an unusual challenge, and will demand a modification of my original design. But yes, I have thought of a way to handle even that."

"Then tell us," said Hermione. Her leg was bouncing off the corner of her seat.

Hortensia still waited until Harry made an encouraging little go-ahead motion with one hand, and then looked off into the distance as if she was contemplating eternity. "A ritual is made of will, ultimately. It may use a circle of blood or salt, the bark of an ash tree or a scattering of cinnabar, but it is human will that raises the power around the circle or invests the ash bark with symbolic effect or says that because cinnabar is a form of quicksilver, it may be used with immediately deadly effect. To poison a ritual, poison the will.

"To poison the will might not sound much less difficult than to poison the ritual itself. But the will is only a portion of the human being, like the magical core or the mind. They are not physical, either. They are the sum of the power or the thoughts or the motions that make them up."

Hortensia sounded as if she was reciting from a book, but in a creepier way than Hermione, her eyes focused far away. Harry raised an eyebrow at Hermione, but she only shook her head and frowned. If this _was _in a book, it wasn't one she was familiar with, and that alone was enough to make Harry listen to Hortensia with more interest.

"Will can be destroyed, by drugs or the Imperius Curse or subtle poison or simply another will. So I created a poison that is its opposite—another will itself, one that wishes to neutralize the buildup of willpower when it encounters it." Hortensia was speaking more normally now, her eyes fastened on Harry. "It will be a tricky matter to modify it so that it seeks the buildup of willpower inside a crystal rather than the open air or inside a chamber, but I know the theory. I will do it."

"And how soon do you think you can have it ready?" Although Harry didn't know what Lenneal's method was and thought he might have been able to do something that would take other people months in a shorter amount of time, she was right about one thing. They couldn't wait for long.

"In a few days," said Hortensia, and looked seriously at him. "If you need to do something else, then I will develop the poison anyway. It is something that I want to exist."

Harry concealed a shudder. Perhaps it was the intense focus that made being around Hortensia so disturbing. "Well. Thank you. Go ahead and make it. I don't think we'll find a better defense."

Hortensia nodded and stood up, wandering out of his office. That left Hermione and Lenneal to exchange glances before Lenneal turned back to him.

"Do you think it wise to trust her, Lord Potter? She could turn her poisons expertise against you at any time."

"I think that it's wise I made her take an oath of loyalty not to harm me or my people unless she's attacked first," said Harry, and grinned a little at the shock on Lenneal's face. "I understand what you're saying, but it's fine, really. I trust Hortensia to want to defend the Court where she's taken up residence."

Lenneal gave him a long, slow look, and then stood. "I should probably be present at the speech that Candidate Malfoy is going to make today. He said that he would be revealing something that would change the Ministry's relationship with you."

Harry grinned more widely. "I know he is," he said. "Do send me a Pensieve memory of your reaction later. It should be priceless." There was a reason that Draco hadn't told anyone other than Harry what he intended.

Lenneal gave him another slow look before leaving. That left Hermione to hold Harry's eyes and ask, "But _you _don't need to go to the speech, do you?"

Harry shook his head. "I'm going to be busy with more interviews, anyway. And making sure that the Veela know that when they expand Hogwarts, they have to do it _carefully_, or they're going to end up making more mistakes and causing more trouble than it's worth."

"Expand Hogwarts?"

"They persuaded me their tree-souls would need more room to grow, and I agree that that's probably true," said Harry, with a slight shrug. "The tree-souls can grow Hogwarts with roots that reinforce the stone walls. I don't think it's a permanent solution to all our space problems, but it's a good one for now."

Hermione nodded and stood. Her gaze didn't leave him, though. Harry cocked his head. "What?"

"You're working with so many different people now," said Hermione. "And you're taking such aggressive measures in defense. I wonder if the Ministry really needs to be persuaded to leave you alone anymore. Maybe they would leave you alone of their own free will now."

Harry snorted a little. "I have some hope that what Draco's going to speak about today will strengthen that attitude, but it'll still take a little while to settle in completely."

Hermione nodded. Harry was pleased to see that she didn't immediately argue the way she would have before, but stood up with a faintly resigned expression and reached for the books on the desk. "You won't need these now that you have Hortensia's promise to come up with the poison, will you?"

"Well, I might fancy a bit of light reading, so you can leave them," said Harry, solely to see the expression on her face.

* * *

Draco took his place in front of the crowd, his expression nervous and resigned. He knew it was, because he had made it so, and cast a few glamours that would hide twitches of his eyes and mouth and help to strengthen the impression. He touched the gold chain around his neck and glanced back and forth, across the crowd.

They had assembled in the Ministry, this time, in one of the courtrooms that the Wizengamot used for highly public trials. That was a challenging, daring gesture, one that Draco had discussed with Amos Diggory and Lucy Lenneal for some time before he decided to use it. The council that technically had replaced the Minister would find it easy to get at him right now and strike him down.

But he couldn't worry as much about that. He had other things to worry about. _Real _things.

The crowd that filled the courtroom, sitting beneath the balcony where he stood and staring up at him, consisted mostly of Ministry people, as he should have expected. A small contingent of reporters was shunted off to one side, and there were Unspeakables with their hoods down and a few people Draco almost recognized by now, they followed him so stubbornly from speech to speech. He didn't know for sure if they were spies for someone or just people who looked on politics as a spectator sport.

But mostly the Ministry. As he had planned and decided on. He fingered the golden chain, and saw more than one person look at it with an expression of high curiosity. But he didn't let it go.

Heads bent towards each other all over the courtroom, and although a lot of people whispered so that no one else could overhear what they were saying, the buzzing noise itself increased the waves of sound. Draco waited until some of them were speaking in loud voices, caution overwhelmed by their excitement. Then he cleared his throat, the _Sonorus _he had already cast bouncing the sound in several different directions.

They stopped talking at once, and turned to stare up at him. Draco nodded as if embarrassed and waved his hand so that Rosenthal, waiting in the wings, would come forwards with a sheaf of parchment that his audience would take to be the text of his speech.

Draco waited until Rosenthal was halfway across the floor to him, as they had already decided on. Then he flung up a hand. Rosenthal stopped and took a step backwards, the "speech" dangling in her hand. She looked surprised and disconcerted in a way that Draco wanted to applaud her for. It was exactly as they had practiced it.

He turned his head back and forth, collecting eyes, making people stare at him. Then he drew out the golden chain and the vial that hung on the end of it, made of green glass. He saw people craning their necks to look, and obligingly held the vial up higher so that they could all see it and focus on it.

"This is the memory of the last encounter I had with Harry Potter," he whispered. "I didn't want to show it to you. I brought it with me today to give me strength, to remind myself of what we would face if I didn't negotiate with him and keep his attention. But I find that I can't keep it private. I _have _to share it, to watch the same understanding reflected in your eyes."

The Unspeakables' hoods rustled. Other people were reacting, too, calling and shouting, but Draco watched the Unspeakables. They wondered where he was going with this, he was almost certain. They had been trying to present the image of Harry as dangerous, but it must seem strange that Draco would do their work for them.

Draco gently uncorked the vial and tapped the glass of the lip with his wand. "There is a spell that can make memories visible without the aid of a Pensieve," he whispered. "It costs a lot to cast, but not as much as I've already suffered."

And that was all true, except the last part. This was a memory made visible, and anyone else who wanted to could go and look up the spell, locate it and verify for themselves that Draco was telling the truth.

What they were seeing was, of course, the doctored memory that Draco and Harry had created between them as Harry's magic slowly grew back to its full strength. But since it was spun of Harry's power, it wouldn't have the telltales of a fake or changed memory that most people could recognize.

The green gas that rose from the vial slowly turned darker and diversified, and then became the shore of the lake at Hogwarts, the trees of the Forbidden Forest leaning near. Draco knelt on the shore, shivering, his hands extended outwards. Harry stood in front of him, leaning down with his face locked in a scowl.

His magic extended enormous black wings from his back, curving out and down until Draco was in their shadow.

Some people, maybe near the back and unable to see as well, started shrieking that Lord Potter's black phoenix had never died. Draco didn't care about that. It was the interaction between him and Harry that was most important.

"I don't understand why you let me live," the fake Draco whispered, "if you despise me that much."

The fake Harry bent down and touched Draco's chin, not with a finger but with the tip of a wing. Draco shivered a little, watching. He did wish sometimes that Harry had done that to him in reality, but not for the reasons that anyone would assume—at least, anyone who wasn't Rosenthal.

"I'm letting you live because you amuse me," the fake Harry said, and shook his head, the emotions sharp and vivid on his face. "I think that no one else would amuse me as much. You're someone I had a _rivalry _with in Hogwarts! Someone who thought that he could just swagger right up to me and offer me all sorts of advice on the political scene." He stretched his wings and stepped back a little, as though he wanted Draco to cower at different parts of his shadow. "My magic substitutes for knowledge. I really don't need you to offer me anything that you _could_. If you were a different kind of person, maybe…"

Then he reached down and gripped Draco's shoulder. "But if you were a different kind of person, one who had a more realistic evaluation of his own goals, you wouldn't be as amusing."

The fake Draco's face drained of blood as Harry squeezed down. They had carefully made up the memory to make it look like Harry was leaving a bruise on him at the precise spot where the real Harry had left a love bite. Draco touched his shoulder in reality and winced, because the spot was a little tender, and saw his audience's eyes follow the gesture.

"I'm going to let you go now," the fake Harry whispered, tender as a sadist. "And you'd better win the election, because I don't want to deal with someone else, someone who doesn't amuse me as much, as the head of the Ministry."

The fake Draco nodded frantically, scrambled to his feet, and ran. The memory dissolved then, with the fake Harry spreading his wings as if to fly.

In the silence that followed, Draco lowered the vial and stared at the faces that stared back at him.

"We have to propitiate him," Draco whispered. "It's the only way that we can survive. And for some reason, I'm the one he wants to do that." He tried to smile. He knew it came out as sickly, because that was the way he willed it to come out. "I hope that I can fight for some independence for the Ministry in the meantime, but it's not an immediate goal. My immediate goal is survival—and the survival of the wizarding world that will come along with me, at least if Lord Potter keeps his word."

There was uproar then, questions, and even Rosenthal played along with realistic shock and overprotectiveness when some of the questions turned too personal. But the Unspeakables were the ones that Draco kept an eye on.

They were whispering to each other, but they didn't leave the room. They listened intently to every word Draco and Rosenthal said, and more than once, Draco felt the tingle of a charm launched at the vial around his neck, as if to figure out what it was made of or Summon it discreetly.

They might not be convinced yet, but they were intrigued, perhaps frightened, and they had better reason than most to know how powerful Harry was. Draco held his frightened-but-brave expression with some difficulty, given the laughter in his heart.


End file.
